.,^^ 


]mmim^mmi:\mmm\i\mi\\m']'mm<]\}^i''['n^m'i^:ui  rM  i  ii^'i ;  i !'^!  i : :  • :.! ];' 


SiTiaM  OF  OREGON 


liESHlLX 

UNIVERSITY'  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2008  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/acquisitionofore01mars 


WILLIAM  L  .\L\RSHALL 


ACQUISITION  OF  OREGON 


AND   THE 


Long  Suppressed  Evidence  About 
Marcus  Whitman 


BY 

PRINCIPAL   WILLIAM   L   MARSHALL 


OF  CHICAGO 


PART    I 


SEATTLE 

LOWMAN  &  HANFORD  CO. 

1911 


Copyright  1905  by 

WILLIAM  L   MARSHALL 

All  rights  rtservtd 


CLARENCE   B.   BAGLEY.   Publisher 
April.   1911 


CONTENTS 


■:! 


FOREWORD 2 

'^    INTRODUCTION 6-21 

r    WILLIAM  I.  MARSHALL.     A  BiogTaphical  Sketch 23-24 

^     CHAPTER  I.     The  T^niqne  Features  of  the  History  of  Oregon  25-28 

"   CHAPTER  II.     The  Period  of  Maritime  Discovery 29-38 

^  CHAPTER  III.     The  Louisiana  Purchase  and  the  Lewis  and 

^            CI  ark  Exploration  39-48 


CHAPTER  IV.     Tlie  Founding  and  Capture  of  Astoria 49-52 

CHAPTER  V.  The  True  History  of  the  Discovery  of  Routes 
Practicable  for,  and  the  Development  of  the  First  Trans- 
continental Wagon  Road 53-140 

CHAPTER  VI.     (lovernmental  Action  Relating  to  the  Acqui- 
^         sition  of  Oregon 141-284 

>    cmAPTER  VII.     The  Truth  About  the  Relation  of  the  Hud- 
'^         son's  Bay  Company  to  the  American  Exploration,  Occu- 
])ation  and  Settlement  of  Oregon  as  Shown  in  Original 
Documents 285-450 


\ 


19S123 


FOREWORD 


The  publication  of  these  volumes  is  made  possible  by  the  volun- 
tary contributions  of  a  number  of  citizens  of  the  States  of  Orejion 
and  Washington  who  are  interested  in  the  encouragement  of  indi- 
vidual research  that  concerns  the  history  of  those  States  and  of  the 
whole  of  "Old  Oregon."  These  contributors  may  not  necessarily 
agree  with  all  of  the  sentiments  and  conclusions  herein  contained, 
but  desire  that  the  citations  and  quotations  which  have  been  so  care- 
fully and  laboriously  gathered  together  by  Mr.  Marshall,  and  his 
conclusions,  shall  be  permanently  preserved  for  the  use  of  those  who 
may  seek  for  the  truth  of  history.  They  also  wish  to  give  recogni- 
tion to  the  work  of  an  author  whose  life  was  largely  spent  in  the  ill- 
paid  profession  of  an  educator  and  whose  best  years  were  given 
without  financial  reward  to  the  study  of  the  history  of  the  acquisi- 
tion of  the  ''Oregon  Country"  to  the  Ignited  States,  and  who  at  the 
time  of  his  death  ranked  among  the  highest  authorities  upon  that 
subject.  No  attempt  has  been  made  to  change  the  manuscript;  it  has 
been  printed  as  left  by  the  author. 

Many  years  ago  Mr.  C.  B.  Bagley,  of  Seattle,  became  interested 
in  the  controversy  regarding  any  influence  Dr.  Marcus  Whitman 
might  have  had  upon  the  final  adjustment  of  the  rival  claims  of  the 
Ignited  States  and  Oreat  Britain  to  a  part  of  Old  Oregon,  and  began 
collecting  material  for  a  pami)hlet  or  book  giving  his  views  upon 
the  questions  involved. 

After  the  death  of  Mr.  ^Marshall,  the  ]>rivate  library,  letters,  note 
books  and  manuscripts  of  that  gentleman  passed  into  Mr.  Bagley's 
possession,  nmking  his  collection  perhaps  the  largest  extant  of  books, 
pamphlets,  mannscri]>ts  and  early  news])apers  covering  both  sides 
of  the  controversy.  Several  years  ago  a  small  book  published  by 
Mr.  Marshall  came  under  his  observation ;  this  was  followed  by 
personal  acquaintance  and  knowledge  of  the  extent  and  value  of 
the  work  that  Mr.  Marshall  had  in  preparation.  This  led  to  a 
change  of  plan  whereby  Mr.  Bagley  furnished  valuable  historical 
material  allied  to  the  work  in  hand  and  abandoned  the  plan  of  writ- 
ing and  publishing  on  his  own  account  because  of  his  general  accord 
with  the  findino's  and  conclusions  of  Mr.  Marshall. 


INTRODUCTION 


My  discussion  of  Prof.  Bourne's  paper  as  an  appendix  herein, 
being  a  reprint  from  the  plates  of  the  Trans.  Am.  Hist.  Asscn.  for 
1900,  necessarily  retains  the  paging  of  the  Transactions. 

Justice  to  us  both  requires  the  statement  that  his  investigations 
up  to  the  Detroit  meeting,  Dec.  27-29,  1900,  were  entirely  independ 
ent  of  mine,  neither  of  us  knowing  of  the  other's  work  till  shortly 
before  that  time,  and  we  never  having  corresponded  or  met  till  the 
evening  before  his  paper  was  read,  when,  for  the  first  time,  I  learned 
its  scope  and  point  of  view. 

In  1888,  after  eleven  years'  careful  investigation  of  the  History 
of  the  Acquisition  of  the  Old  Oregon  Territory,  I  wrote  a  book  of 
300  pages  on  it,  but  not  wishing,  as  so  many  have  done,  "to  darken 
counsel  by  words  without  knowledge"  on  so  important  a  subject, 
when  it  was  ready  for  the  press  I  laid  it  aside  to  follow  up  the  exam- 
ination of  some  minor  points,  on  which  (though  as  my  subsequent 
studies  proved  my  conclusions  were  right),  I  had  not  then  obtained 
as  irresistible  evidence  as  for  all  the  more  important  points. 

In  1893,  just  as  I  had  found  the  evidence  which  established 
beyond  question  the  correctness  of  my  conclusions  on  these  minor 
points,  so  that  I  was  ready  to  revise  and  publish,  the  panic  nearly 
rained  me,  and  I  was  obliged  to  again  postpone  publication  and 
struggle  for  my  financial  existence,  as  I  well  knew  that  there  could 
be  no  pecuniary  profit  in  publishing  the  truth  about  the  Whitman 
Saved  Oregon  fiction.  Though  not  able  to  print,  the  industry  and 
devotion  of  my  daughter,  who  was  my  private  secretary  for  four- 
teen years,  enabled  me  to  send  to  many  of  our  leading  historians 
and  teachers  and  students  of  history  extensive  duplicate  type-writ- 
ten transcripts  of  much  of  the  long-concealed  contemporaneous  evi- 
dence in  the  Whitman  matter,  in  nearly  2,000  pages  (letter  size)  of 
criticisms  of  the  astonishing  errors  on  every  important  phase  of  the 
Oregon  Acquisition— its  diplomacy;  the  executive  and  congress- 
ional action  upon  it;  the  discovery  and  development  of  the  trans- 
continental wagon  road  to  it;  the  interest  of  the  people  of  the 
nation  in  it ;  the  extent  to  which  it  had  been  explored  and  reported 
on  to  the  government  prior  to  March,  1843 ;  the  true  relations  of 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  to  the  American  exploration,  occupation 


6  IXTRODUCTION 

and  settlement  of  Ore2,on ;  the  origin  and  proper  place  in  its  his- 
tory of  the  missions  to  the  Oregon  Indians  of  the  Methodist  and 
the  Am.  Bd.  of  Com.  of  Foreign  Missions;  and  the  origin,  pnrpose, 
and  results  of  Whitman's  ride — which  were  in  many  of  our  leading 
school  histories  and  in  a  number  of  more  pretentious  historical 
works,  as  the  result  of  the  dependence  of  their  authors  on  Revs, 
n.  n.  Spalding,  Wm.  Barrows,  J.  G.  Craighead,  C.  Eells,  M.  Eells, 
and  on  Mr.  AV.  11.  Gray,  and  other  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  Story. 

These  "original  sources,"  which  are  the  only  proper  basis  for  the 
history  of  Oregon  (as,  when  existent  and  accessible,  they  are  for 
the  history  of  all  other  regions),  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman 
Saved  Oregon  Story  have  all  either  totally  ignored,  like  Revs.  C. 
Eells,  Wm.  Barrows,  H.  H.  Spalding,  J.  G.  Craighead,  and  Mr.  W. 
H.  Gray,  or  else  have  deliberately  suppressed  nearly  all  of  it  and 
misquoted  and  garbled  the  very  little  they  have  used,  like  Nixon, 
and  Mowry,  and  Coffin,  and  Mrs.  Eva  Emory  Dye,  and  Revs.  M. 
Eells,  S.  B.  L.  Penrose,  Thos.  Laurie,  H.  W.  Parker,  and  L.  H. 
Hallock. 

I  requested  the  leading  historians  to  whom  these  manuscripts 
were  sent  to  subject  them  to  the  most  rigorous  scrutiny,  to  compare 
their  quotations  and  summaries  with  any  of  the  original  documents 
accessible  to  them,  and  to  be  so  kind  as  to  inform  me  if  they  found 
any  statement  of  any  important  fact  incorrect,  or  any  quotation 
in  the  least  degree  inaccurate  or  any  summary  of  documents 
(which  want  of  space  prevented  me  from  fully  quoting),  in  any  way 
unfair,  as  he  who  shows  me  any  error  in  my  work  does  me  the  great 
favor  of  enabling  me  to  be  wiser  than  I  have  been. 

Of  the  several  score  of  those  who  have  read  these  manuscripts — 
historians  of  national  and  international  reputation,  professors  of 
history  in  universities  and  colleges,  teachers  of  history  in  normal 
schools,  high  schools  and  academies,  principals  of  schools,  judges, 
clergymen,  lawyers,  editors,  and  public  officials  of  various  kinds — • 
most  of  whom  had  been  believei's  in  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon 
Story  and  had  endorsed  it  in  lectures  or  sermons,  or  in  newspajier 
and  magazine  ai'tieles,  or  in  their  school  and  other  histories,  and 
therefore  very  naturally  would  have  preferred  not  to  have  it  ]»roved 
false,  and  who  therefore  subjected  all  criticism  of  and  evidence  ad- 
verse to  it  to  the  most  careful,  and  some  of  them  to  the  most  hostile 
scrutiny,  no  one  has  pointed  out  a  single  error  of  any  fact  of  the 
least  imj)ortance,  or  a  single  inaccurate  (piotation,  or  unfair  sum- 
mary, and,  except  Dr.  W.  A.  Mowry,  every  person — man  or  woman 
— who  has  read  even  one  quarter  part  of  these  manuscripts,  has  been 
convinced  that  they  totally  demolish  every  form  of  the  AA'hitman 
Saved  Oregon  Story. 


INTRODUCTION  7 

Why  Dr.  Mowry  was  not  convinced  will  be  apparent  from  some 
extracts  from  a  letter  he  wrote  me  on  Dec.  9,  1898,  imploring  me 
not  to  publish  any  of  the  really  vital  evidence  relating  to  the  Whit- 
man mission,  and  the  origin  and  purpose  of  Whitman's  ride  as  fol- 
lows: "I  have  copied  hundreds  of  typewritten  pages  from  those 
letters"  {i.  e.,  of  Whitman  and  his  associates  to  the  Am.  Bd.)  "dur- 
ing the  last  thirteen  years. 

"One  thing,  however,  I  have  not  felt  at  liberty  to  copy,  and  do 
not  think  the  Board  should  ever  have  permitted  you  or  any  one  else 
to  copy. 

"I  refer  to  the  confidential  letters  written  by  the  missionaries  to 
the  Secretary  of  the  Board,  relating  to  their  private  and  personal 
aflPairs,  and  particularly  complaints  one  of  another. 

"I  do  not  think  you  ought  to  publish  any  extracts  from  the  letters 
of  that  character. 

".  .  .  In  my  own  case,  I  always  showed  to  the  secretary  the 
matter  which  I  had  copied,  and  I  believe  that  this  has  been  the  gen- 
eral practice.  I  certainly  hope  you  will  not  make  public  such  pri- 
vate affairs,  even  though  the  courtesy  was  extended  to  you  to  copy 
private  letters." 

It  only  needs  to  be  said  concerning  this  attempt  to  cajole  or 
frighten  me  into  continued  concealment  of  all  the  really  vital  evi- 
dence as  to  the  origin  and  purpose  of  Whitman's  ride,  and  as  to  all 
the  other  questions  needful  to  an  understanding  of  Whitman's  life 
and  character,  that,  first,  there  were  no  "confidential  letters,"  and, 
second,  that  the  Secretary  of  the  American  Board  did  not  attempt 
to  limit  the  thoroughness  of  my  investigations,  and,  third,  that  I 
was  not  given  the  privilege  "to  copy  private  letters,"  but  to  examine 
the  ofiicial  correspondence  of  sundry  employes  of  the  Am.  Bd.  of 
Comrs.  of  Foreign  Missions,  a  great  eleemosynary  corporation,  con- 
tinually begging  for  funds  from  the  public  to  support  its  employes 
in  missionary  labor  (which  ought,  certainly,  to  include  not  only  the 
inculcation  by  them  upon  heathen  peoples  of  the  importance  of 
constantly  telling  the  truth,  but  also  to  include  a  constant  practice 
of  that  most  fundamental  of  all  the  virtues  by  the  said  missionaries 
themselves — and  by  the  secretaries  and  other  officers  in  the  home 
ofiices  of  the  said  American  Board). 

When,  in  an  evil  hour  in  1866,  Secretary  Treat  of  the  American 
Board  endorsed  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story,  by  the  publica- 
tion of  Rev.  C.  Eells'  letters  of  May  28,  1866,  in  the  Missionary 
Herald  for  December,  1866,  it  "goes  without  saying"  that  he  at  once 
made  every  letter  or  other  paper  in  the  archives  of  the  American 
Board,  which  would  throw  any  light  on  that  historical  problem,  a 
public  historical  document,  freest  access  to  which  no  officer  of  that 
society  had  any  moral  right  thenceforth  to  deny,  to  any  honest  stu- 


8  INTRODUCTION 

dent  of  the  history  of  the  United  States,  nor  to  put  any  limitations 
on  what  such  student  should  copy  from  and  publish  of  them. 

By  constantly  adhering  throughout  his  "Marcus  Whitman  and 
the  Early  Days  of  Oregon"  to  the  ideas  of  the  proper  limits  of  his- 
torical investigation  and  publication,  stated  in  the  foregoing  ex- 
tracts from  his  letter  to  me  of  Dec.  9,  1898,  and  carefully  suppress- 
ing not  only  everything  in  the  archives  of  the  American  Board,  but 
also  everything  in  the  government  archives  which  would  give  his 
readers  the  real  facts  concerning  the  origin,  purpose  and  results  of 
^^■hitman's  ride,  and  the  real  attitude  of  the  national  government 
and  the  people  generally  towards  the  acquisition  of  Oregon,  and 
also  all  that  relates  to  the  rapid  decadence  of  the  American  Board 
mission  in  Oregon  after  1839,  and  all  that  relates  to  the  real  causes 
of  the  Whitman  massacre,  and  nearly  all  that  shows  the  true  rela- 
tion of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  to  the  missionaries,  and  to 
Americans  generally  in  the  Oregon  territory,  and  the  most  vital 
parts  of  the  evidence  needful  to  a  fair  estimate  of  Whitman's  char- 
acter and  work,  Dr.  Mowry  has  produced  a  book  somewhat  less 
hysterical  than  "Barrows'  Oregon,"  and  Nixon's  ''How  Marcus 
VN'hitman  Saved  Oregon,"  and  Craighead's  "Story  of  Marcus  Whit- 
man," but  a  book  every  whit  as  worthless  and  misleading  as  any  of 
them. 

To  several  of  these  parties,  that  they  might  be  fully  informed  of 
all  that  could  be  said  in  defense  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon 
Story,  in  addition  to  my  co])ious  quotations  by  page  and  chapter 
from  Gray,  and  Spalding,  and  Barrows,  and  Nixon,  and  Mowry,  and 
Craighead,  and  Mrs.  Dye,  and  Revs.  C.  Eells,  and  Myron  Eells,  and 
Penrose,  and  Parker,  I  sent  a  copy  of  a  pamphlet  published  in  1883 
by  M.  Eells,  and  the  pamphlet  published  in  Portland,  Ore.,  in  1885, 
entitled  "The  Whitman  Controversy,"  containing  articles  by  M. 
Eells,  W.  H.  riray,  and  Edward  C.  Ross,  and  if  I  had  had  copies  to 
spare  should  have  been  glad  to  have  sent  these  pamj)hlets  to  each 
of  them. 

Of  course,  I  much  regret  that  it  should  have  fallen  to  the  lot  of 
Prof.  Bourne  (who  never  began  the  examination  of  this  subject 
until  some  years  after  I  had  completed  its  investigation  as  far  as 
all  really  important  points  are  concerned),  to  anticipate  me  in  the 
publication  of  its  fictitious  nature,  but  that  is  merely  another  ex- 
ample of  "the  irony  of  fate,"  and  I  have  not  the  least  cause  to  com- 
plain of  him,  as  his  treatment  of  me  has  been  in  all  respects  thor- 
oughly honorable  and  courteous. 

The  original  form  of  his  "Legend  of  Marcus  Whitman"  (in  Am. 
Hist.  Review,  January,  1901),  was  in  print  before  we  met,  but  I 
had  much  pleasure  in  rendering  him  considerable  aid  in  preparing 


INTRODUCTION  9 

his  revised  and  fuller  version  of  it  (in  "Historical  Essays,"  Scrib- 
ners'  Sons,  1901),  for  which  he  gave  me  full  credit  therein. 

Having  got  my  head  a  little  above  water  financially,  it  was  my 
purpose  to  publish  in  January,  1903,  a  volume  containing  the  most 
important  i)art  of  the  contemporaneous  evidence  on  the  Oregon 
question,  and  I  had  procured  an  estimate  of  the  cost,  when  my 
daughter's  health  failed,  and  the  doctors  peremptorily  ordered  her 
sent  to  California,  where,  unexpectedly  to  all,  she  died,  Dec.  17, 1902. 

This  not  only  took  all  the  heart  out  of  life  for  her  mother  and 
me,  but  again  crippled  me,  not  only  financially,  but  otherwise  also 
by  depriving  me  of  her  almost  indispensable  aid  in  preparing  copy 
and  reading  proof,  and  so  again  compelled  postponement  of  publica- 
tion, and  even  now  I  cannot  find  time  nor  heart  to  prepare  one-half 
the  matter  that  I  think  ought  to  be  printed;  but  fearful  that  if 
longer  delayed  some  other  stroke  of  adverse  fortune  may  prevent 
forever  the  publication  of  the  evidence  collected  by  me  at  such  great 
expense  of  time  and  money,  herewith  is  presented  to  the  public  the 
vital  parts  of  that  evidence,  most  of  it  first  unearthed  by  me,  and 
heretofore  wholly  inaccessible  to  the  general  public,  and  onh^  made 
accessible  to  a  few  score  historians  and  historical  students  by  my 
manuscripts,  as  stated  on  page  6,  ante. 

The  study  of  the  history  of  the  Acquisition  of  Oregon  has  occu- 
pied most  of  my  spare  time  since  1877.  From  1875  to  1887,  being  a 
lecturer  with  illustrations  on  Yellowstone  National  Park ;  Yosemite 
and  the  Big  Trees  of  California ;  Colorado ;  Utah  and  the  Mormon 
Question;  California;  The  New  West;  Gold  Mines  and  Gold  Min- 
ing, and  other  subjects  pertaining  to  the  scenery,  resources,  indus- 
tries and  history  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  Pacific  Coast  regions, 
appearing  in  many  of  the  leading  lecture  courses  of  twenty-six 
states  from  Maine  to  California,  and  from  Minnesota  to  Georgia, 
1  was  much  taken  with  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  when  first 
told  to  me,  in  1877,  by  Dr.  W.  A.  Mowry,  and,  like  Mrs.  Victor  and 
Hon.  Elwood  Evans,  and  Gov.  P.  H.  Burnett,  and  many  others, 
assented  to  it  without  investigation,  because  the  men  who  originated 
and  endorsed  it  were  in  position  to  know  the  facts  and  ought  to 
have  told  the  truth. 

Besides,  it  would  have  been  worth  fifteen  or  twenty  thousand 
dollars  to  me  as  the  basis  of  two  illustrated  lectures  on  ''Where 
Kolls  the  Oregon,"  if  I  could  have  found  evidence  to  support  it  so 
that  I  could  have  risked  my  reputation  in  advocating  it  from  the 
lecture  platform,  while,  if  not  true,  I  saw  clearly  that  no  lectures 
could  be  prepared  on  far-away  Oregon  which,  in  this  generation, 
would  even  repay  the  expense  necessary  for  obtaining  illustrations 
for  them,  let  alone  any  profit  on  them.  Naturally,  therefore,  I  very 
much  wished  the  story  to  be  true,  not  only  for  the  pleasure  it  would 


10  INTRODUCTION 

Lave  been  to  me  to  have  called  the  attention  of  the  public  to  a  neg- 
lected patriotic  hero,  but  also  because  it  would  have  greatly  in- 
creased my  income  as  long  as  I  had  cared  to  remain  in  the  lecture 
field. 

Thus  strongly  predisi)osed  to  accept  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon 
Story  as  true,  and  all  the  vital  evidence  having  been  so  carefully 
concealed  from  the  public  that  I  did  not  get  access  to  it  till  1887, 
for  five  years  I  continued  to  assent  to  it,  but  was  constantly  puz- 
zled by  my  inability  to  obtain  any  definite  and  conclusive  evidence 
for  it,  though  eagerly  welcoming  every  bit  of  evidence  that  even 
seemed  to  support  it,  and  scrutinizing  with  utmost  rigor  all  that 
seemed  to  militate  against  it. 

In  1882,  having  prepared  a  lecture  endorsing  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  Story,  and  begun  to  book  dates  for  it,  I  journeyed  across 
the  continent  from  Massachusetts  (where  I  then  lived),  to  Oregon, 
thinking  I  should  certainly  there  be  able  to  find  the  conclusive  evi- 
dence that  I  had  sought  in  vain  for  five  years  in  the  East.  I  made 
a  pilgrimage  to  Whitman's  grave,  and  learned,  from  the  man  then 
living  on  the  site  of  the  mission  station,  that  there  was  very  great 
doubt  about  the  truth  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story,  and 
returning  to  Portland  called  at  the  Orcgonian  office,  and  was  re- 
ferred to  Hon.  M.  P.  Deady,  United  States  District  and  Circuit 
Judge  for  the  Oregon  region  from  1800  till  his  death  in  1893,  and  a 
man  whose  ability  and  character  I  liad  heard  Associate  Justice 
Field,  of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court,  commend  in  the  very 
highest  terms. 

To  Judge  Deady  I  stated  my  purpose  in  journeying  to  Oregon, 
and  said:  "I  shall  be  greatly  obliged.  Judge,  if  you  can  inform  me 
vhere  I  can  find  valid  evidence- that  will  establish  the  truth  of  the 
Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story." 

He  replied:  "I  am  sorry  that  I  can  do  nothing  to  help  you  out, 
Mr.  Marshall,  but  the  fact  is,  there  is  no  truth  in  the  story,  and  no 
evidence  has  been  produced  that  will  bear  examination  in  support 
of  it.    The  whole  story  is  merely  one  of  old  Gray's  yarns." 

He  referred  me  to  I\Irs.  Victor  and  Hon.  Ehvood  Evans  as  two 
persons  who  had  on  investigation  been  convinced  of  the  total  falsity 
of  the  Saving  Oregon  Story  of  Whitman's  Ride. 

I  corresjjonded  with  both  of  them  (not  having  time  then  to 
remain  longer  on  the  Pacific  Coast),  and  soon  became  convinced 
that  I  must  cancel  the  dates  already  booked  foi-  (he  Oregon  lecture 
and  give  it  a  much  more  careful  examination  before  risking  my  rep- 
utation by  endorsing  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story. 

Hoping  still  that  something  might  be  saved  from  the  ruins  of 
the  story  that  I  could  use  on  the  lecture  platform,  I  continued  my 
study  of  the  subject  for  two  years  more,  and  then,  on  Nov.  13,  1884 


INTRODUCTION  11 

in  a  lecture  on  Oregon  in  the  great  Peabody  Institute  course  in  Bal- 
timore, after  some  forty  minutes'  discussion  of  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  Story,  I  concluded  with  the  following:  "Heroic  as  was 
Whitman's  ride  (as  is  every  daring  deed  done  for  an  adequate  mo- 
tive), it  was  undertaken  solely  on  missionary  business,  had  no  politi- 
cal purpose,  accomplished  no  political  result,  and  had  no  more  to 
do  with  saving  Oregon,  or  any  part  of  the  Old  Oregon  Territory,  to 
the  United  States,  than  it  had  with  the  election  of  Louis  Napoleon 
to  the  presidency  of  the  French  Kepublic,  and  no  man  who  will  read 
the  evidence  can  doubt  that  if  Marcus  Whitman  had  never  been 
born  our  line  would  have  been  49  degrees  to  the  Pacific  Coast,  pre- 
cisely as  it  is  today."' 

This  conclusion  having  been  questioned  with  no  little  acerbity  by 
Dr.  W.  A.  Mowry,  in  the  spring  of  1885  I  sent  so  much  of  the  manu- 
script of  the  lecture  as  covered  the  discussion  of  the  Whitman  mat- 
ter (concluding  with  the  above  quoted  paragraph)  to  George  Ban- 
croft, with  a  request  that  he  would  read  it,  and  give  me  his  opinion 
as  to  its  historical  accuracy. 

George  Bancroft  knew  the  agencies  which  secured  the  Oregon 
Territory  to  us,  not  only  better  than  anyone  else  ever  did  know, 
but  better  than  anyone  else  ever  can  know  them,  because  he  was  in 
Polk's  cabinet  until  after  the  Treaty  of  181G  fixing  the  north  bound- 
ary of  Oregon  was  made,  and  immediately  thereafter  was  sent  as  our 
Minister  to  England,  and  remained  there  through  the  rest  of  Polk's 
administration,  and  when,  in  1871,  after  the  San  Juan  Island  ques- 
tion— which  was  the  very  fag  end  of  the  Oregon  boundary  question 
— had,  on  several  occasions,  nearly  embroiled  us  in  a  war  with 
Great  Britain,  it  was  submitted  by  the  two  nations  to  the  Emperor 
William  for  arbitration,  Bancroft — then  past  70  years  of  age  and 
a  lifelong  Democrat — was  promptly  nominated  by  the  Republican 
President,  Grant,  and  unanimously  confirmed  by  a  Republican  Sen- 
ate, as  our  Minister  Plenipotentiary  and  Envoy  Extraordinary  to 
Berlin,  distinctly  on  the  ground  that  from  his  intimate  personal 
connection  with  the  settlement  of  the  Oregon  boundary  he  was  the 
one  man  best  qualified  to  present  our  case  successfully,  as  he  did. 

Six  months  later  he  returned  it,  with  the  following  note : 

"Newport,  Sept.  17,  1885. 
"Mr.  William  I.  Marshall. 

"Dear  Sir:  I  have  read  your  lecture  and  herewith  return  it. 
It  is  conclusive  on  the  question  you  discuss. 

"Yours  truly, 

"GEORGE  BANCROFT." 


12  INTRODUCTION 

This  alone  oiifrht  to  be  sufficient  to  satisfy  any  candid  person 
tliat  the  Whitman  Saved  Oi'efi;on  Story  is  unhistorical. 

Further,  owing  to  the  deceit  ])racticed  upon  me  in  1877.  as  here- 
inafter stated,  it  was  not  till  1887  that  I  obtained  access  to  the 
"original  sources"  at  the  American  Board  rooms  in  Boston,  so  that 
the  evidence  which  ^\r.  Bancroft  so  positively  endorsed  as  "conclu- 
sive'' was  merely  such  printed  matter  as  was  even  then  easily 
accessible  to  any  patient  and  industrious  student  determined  to 
know  the  truth,  and  was  not  one-fiftieth  part  as  weighty  and  con- 
vincing as  that  which  I  subsequently  obtained  and  incorporated  in 
the  manuscripts  sent  to  leading  historians  in  1898,  1899,  and  1900, 
iind  the  essential  parts  of  which  will  be  found  herein  published  for 
the  first  time. 

My  occu{)ation  as  a  lecturer  trnveling  all  over  the  country  gave 
me  exceptional  facilities  for  studying  the  subject  in  leading  public 
and  private  libraries,  and  old  book  stores,  in  nearly  all  of  our  large 
cities,  and  there  are  few  extensive  collections  of  Americana  of  which 
1  have  been  able  to  learn  in  which  I  have  not  worked  in  j)erson,  or 
from  which  I  have  not  obtained  by  correspondence  what  they  could 
offer  on  this  matter. 

My  investigations  have  been  entirely  independent  of  every  one 
else,  except  in  the  few  cases  in  which  I  acknowledged  indebtedness 
(as  e.  g.  to  Prof.  Bourne,  for  Atkinson's  two  letters  of  1858  and 
1859),  and  while  early  in  my  study  of  the  subject  the  letters  of  Mrs. 
Victor  and  Hon.  Elwood  Evans  to  me  furnished  some  assistance,  it 
is  now  more  than  sixteen  years  since  I  ceased  to  depend  upon  them 
for  anything,  as  I  found  that  while  they  were  in  the  main  correct 
in  their  conclusions  on  all  the  vital  points  involved  in  the  Whitman 
Saved  Oregon  controversy,  their  failure  to  examine  the  "original 
sources''  in  the  correspondence  and  diaries  of  Whitman  and  his 
associates,  and  in  the  government  publications  and  unpublished 
documents,  had  resulted  in  so  many  errors  on  minor  points  that  I 
felt  unwilling  to  rely  upon  them,  j)referriug  to  ])atiently  study  the 
original  sources  myself  for  evidence  upon  all  the  points  involved. 

I  should  probably  never  have  made  a  thoroughly  exhaustive  ex- 
amination of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  if  Mrs.  Victor  had 
not  written  me,  in  1883,  as  follows:  "I  would  advise  you  against 
going  more  deejily  into  investigation  of  the  ^"S'hitman  affair,  for  if 
you  begin  yon  will  be  led  on  for  a  great  length  of  time  to  no  pur- 
pose." 

Pondering  on  that  declaration,  I  said  to  myself:  "Can  it  be  true 
that  an  honest  investigator,  seeking  to  know  the  truth  about  so 
important  a  historical  question  as  to  what  were  the  agencies  which 
secured  to  this  country  nearly  one-twelfth  of  its  domain  on  this 
continent,  when  the  disputed  point  is  only  forty  years,  old  (as  was 


IXTRODUCTION  13 

then  the  case),  and  when  there  must  be,  if  one  only  has  the  patience 
and  the  perseverance  to  search  them  out,  contemporaneous  docu- 
laents  that  will  settle  the  matter  beyond  dispute — can  it  be  that 
such  an  investigator,  on  such  a  quest,  is  only  to  wade  through  a 
dismal  swamp  of  uncertainty  and  doubt  and  come  out  nowhere  ? 

''If  this  is  so,  regarding  historical  matters  only  forty  years  old, 
how  about  those  eighty  or  one  hundred,  or  two,  or  three,  or  five 
hundred,  or  a  thousand?  If  this  statement  is  correct,  surely  we 
would  all  do  better  to  burn  all  historical  books,  and  read  only  fic- 
tion, for  then  we  should  be  entertained,  and  not  feel  at  the  same 
time  that  we  were  probably  being  humbugged  and  deceived. 

"I  do  not  believe  Mrs.  Victor  is  correct  in  this  matter,  and  I  am 
going  to  the  bottom  of  the  Whitman  myth." 

I  am  free  to  say,  however,  looking  back  on  it  now,  that  had  I 
then  supposed  it  would  cost  me  to  arrive  at  the  truth  about  this 
matter  one-fortieth  part  of  the  time  and  labor  and  money  it  has,  I 
should  not  have  been  willing  to  undertake  the  task. 

I  have  visited  Washington,  D.  C,  a  half  dozen  times  to  pursue 
my  investigations  in  the  State,  War  and  Navy  Departments,  and  the 
Congressional  Library. 

I  have  been  four  times  across  the  continent,  in  1882,  1899,  1902 
and  1905,  to  examine  original  sources  in  Oregon,  California  and 
Washington,  and  have  in  my  library  a  full  set  of  the  Transactions 
of  the  Oregon  Pioneer  Association,  and  have  carried  on  an  extensive 
correspondence  with  the  pioneer  settlers  of  Oregon,  including  the 
real  leaders  of  the  migration  of  1843. 

I  have  read  every  book  and  every  magazine  article  printed  in 
this  country  and  in  England,  prior  to  the  treaty  of  1846,  which  in 
any  way  related  to  the  Oregon  question,  and  also  all  of  any  impor- 
tance published  since  that  time. 

I  have  carefully  studied  all  the  debates  on  Oregon  in  the  seven- 
teen sessions  of  Congress  at  which  it  was  discussed  prior  to  Whit- 
man's ride,  and  every  one  of  the  reports  of  committees  of  the  Senate 
or  House  of  Representatives  made  to  those  seventeen  sessions,  and 
also  every  report  of  special  agents  and  government  explorers  and 
cabinet  officers  on  Oregon  made  before  March  1,  1843,  and  all  Con- 
gressional discussions  had  or  committee  reports  on  Oregon  made; 
since  that  time. 

I  have  studied  with  care  the  full  official  documents  on  the  Louis- 
iana Treaty,  the  Treaty  of  Ghent,  the  Florida  Treaty  and  the  Ash- 
burton  Treaty  (all  of  which  have  an  important  bearing  on  the  Ore- 
gon question),  and  also  of  the  three  great  negotiations  with  Eng- 
land in  1818,  1823-24,  and  1826-27  on  Oregon,  and  the  negotiations 
with  Russia  in  1823-4,  all  in  American  State  Papers,  Foreign  Rela- 
tions, as  well  as  the  negotiations  which  resulted  in  the  Treaty  of 


14  INTRODUCTION^ 

184:G,  and  the  subsequent  treaties  for  the  settlement  of  the  chiims 
of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  and  the  Puget's  Sound  Agricultural 
Company  vs.  the  T^nited  States,  and  for  the  arbitration  of  the  San 
Juan  Island  question,  including  the  volume  on  ''The  Berlin  Arbi- 
tration." 

I  have  also  gone  carefully  over  the  2,300  pages  of  evidence,  and 
also  the  arguments  of  connsel  in  the  famous  cases  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Comi)any  and  the  Puget's  Sound  Agricultural  Company  vs.  the 
United  States. 

I  have  read  carefully  every  book  and  pamphlet,  and  every  impor- 
tant magazine  and  newspaper  article  on  both  sides  of  the  Whitman 
Saved  Oregon  Story.  I  have  carefully  studied  the  files  of  the  New 
York  Christian  Advocate  and  Zion's  Herald  for  1833  to  1837,  for 
the  early  records  of  the  Methodist  Mission  to  the  Oregon  Indians, 
Tiud  the  files  of  the  Missionary  Het-ald  from  1835  to  1906  for  such 
information  as  they  were  willing  to  give  to  the  public,  as  to  the 
history  of  the  mission  founded  by  Messrs.  Spalding  and  Whitman, 
and,  by  far  the  most  important  of  all,  I  have  carefully  studied  all 
the  correspondence  at  the  office  of  the  American  Board  from  all  the 
members  of  their  Oregon  mission  from  1835  to  1871,  and  in  Oregon 
and  Washington  the  existing  fragments  of  the  diaries  of  Rev.  H.  H. 
Spalding,  Rev.  Elkanah  Walker,  Mrs.  Spalding,  and  Mrs.  Walker; 
the  whole  aggregating  very  close  to  one  million  words. 

In  the  winter  of  1877-78  I,  on  three  separate  occasions,  inquired 
of  the  late  Charles  Hutchins,  for  years  business  manager  of  the 
Missionary  Herald,  if  there  was  anything  at  the  American  Board 
rooms  that  would  give  me  any  information  about  the  origin  and 
purpose  of  Whitman's  ride,  and  he  informed  me  that  there  was 
nothing,  except  what  was  in  the  Missionary  Herald  for  March,  1809, 
and  May,  1870,  of  which  he  sent  me  copies,  and,  relying  on  the  cor- 
rectness of  his  statements,  it  was  not  till  1887  that  1  learned  that 
there  was  the  above  mentioned  immense  mass  of  original  manu- 
scripts there. 

Had  I  not  been  thus  deceived,  I  should  have  gone  to  the  bottom 
of  the  whole  matter  in  1877,  when  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon 
Story  had  never  been  even  mentioned  in  any  book  or  magazine  (ex- 
cept the  Missionary  Herald)  having  any  wide  circulation,  and 
before  the  immense  amount  of  legendary  tales  had  grown  up  about 
the  matter  which  now  exist,  so  that  then  a  ten  or  twelve-page  mag- 
azine article  would  have  made  an  end  of  the  whole  fiction. 

As  I  like  to  think  of  Mr.  Hutchins  as  an  honest  man,  I  am  in- 
clined to  believe  that  he  was  himself  imposed  upon  by  the  report  of 
some  one  else  at  the  Mission  House,  and  did  not  wilfully  deceive 
me;  but,  however  that  may  be,  the  deception  has  cost  me  many 
thousands  of  dollars  in  time  and  money. 


INTRODUCTION  15 

Beginning  my  investigations  a  believer  in  the  theory  that  Marcus 
Whitman  was  a  great  patriotic  hero  who  saved  Oregon,  and  that 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  were  hostile  to  Americans  exploring  and 
establishing  missions  in  and  settling  in  Oregon,  and  that  they 
sought,  by  establishing  trading  posts  and  making  settlements  there 
themselves,  to  hold  Oregon  for  Great  Britain ;  and  that  our  people 
and  government  down  to  Whitman's  arrival  in  the  States  in  March, 
1843,  were  indifferent  about  retaining  Oregon,  and  ignorant  as  to 
its  value,  and  believed  it  inaccessible  by  wagons  over  the  Rocky 
Mountains ;  and  at  every  step  applying  the  strictest  scientific  meth- 
ods to  the  examination  of  all  the  evidence,  seeking  not  to  support 
any  theory,  but  to  arrive  at  the  exact  truth  about  the  acquisition 
of  Oregon,  I  was  forced,  after  five  years,  to  the  conclusion  that 
Whitman  was  in  no  sense  a  great  man  or  a  great  patriot;  that  his 
ride  was  undertaken  solely  on  the  business  of  his  mission,  and  had 
nothing  to  do  with  saving  any  part  of  Oregon  to  the  United  States; 
but  I  still  thought  the  charges  against  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company 
as  made  by  Gray,  and  Spalding,  and  Barrows  substantially  correct, 
and  it  was  not  till  after  five  years'  further  study  that  I  found  the 
abundant  and  irresistible  evidence  that  those  charges  were  false, 
and  that  every  particle  of  the  contemporaneous  correspondence  and 
reports  of  all  Americans — explorers,  travelers,  settlers  and  mis- 
sionaries—  (including  Gray  and  Spalding  themselves) — who  actu- 
ally went  to  Oregon  from  1828  to  1846,  and  came  in  contact  with 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  officers  at  their  various  posts,  declared 
that  they  had  been  most  hospitably  received  and  treated  at  each 
and  all  of  those  posts,  and  aided  in  every  way  in  exploring  the  Ore- 
gon Territory,  and  in  establishing  missions  and  making  settlements 
therein,  and  that  only  those  Americans  who  sought  to  wrest  the 
fur  trade  from  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  or  to  ''jump"  their  land 
claims  at  Oregon  City  and  at  Vancouver  had  the  slightest  cause 
of  complaint  against  them,  and  even  they  were  subject  to  no  fiercer 
antagonism  in  the  fur  trade  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  than 
they  were  from  rival  American  fur  traders  in  regions  farther  east, 
where  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  had  no  posts,  nor  to  any  severer 
and  often  not  as  severe  measures,  as  from  Americans  whose  land 
they  tried  to  ''jump"  away  from  them,  for  it  was  a  common  thing 
for  men  who  "jumpd  claims"  to  be  shot  on  sight  all  over  the 
Rocky  Mountain  and  Pacific  Coast  regions  by  owners  of  mining 
and  other  possessory  claims  (held  by  precisely  the  same  tenure 
that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  at  Fort  Vancouver,  and  Dr.  Mc- 
Loughlin  at  Oregon  City,  held  their  claims). 

In  my  nearly  ten  years'  residence  in  Montana  (1866-1875)  I 
personally  knew  many  men  who  had  thus  shot  "claim  jumpers,"  and 
in  every  case,  if  any  judicial  inquiry  was  made   (which  was  not 


16  INTRODUCTION 

coiniiioiily  deemed  ;it  all  neeessary  i ,  the  verdict  was  ''justifiable 
homicide,"'  and  T  never  knew  of  a  case  of  more  wanton  and  inex- 
cusable "claim  jumping"  than  Kev.  A.  F.  Waller's  attempt,  in  1842, 
to  seize  on  part  of  Dr.  McLoughlin's  claim  at  Oregon  City  (claimed 
by  him  in  1820),  the  story  of  which  (as  very  briefly  told  by 
Dr.  McLoughlin  himself)  will  be  found  in  a  "Copy  of  a  Document" 
hereinafter  (Part  I.,  Chap.  VII.),  and  more  fully  by  H.  H.  Bancroft 
in  his  "Oregon,"  Vol.  I.,  pages  203-225,  or  the  attempt  of  Williamson 
and  Alderman,  in  1845,  to  jump  part  of  the  premises  at  Fort  Van- 
couver that  had  then  been  in  the  peaceable  and  undisputed  posses- 
sion of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  for  twenty  years  (Cf.  Kept,  of 
Dr.  E.  White,  sub-Indian  Agent  to  Secretary  of  War,  dated  April 
4,  1845).  But  no  one  of  these  men  experienced  death,  or  even 
the  slightest  violence  at  the  hands  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company's 
officers  or  employes. 

The  contemporaneous  evidence  on  this  point  from  Americans 
who  went  to  Oregon  to  explore,  or  as  missionaries  and  settlers, 
prior  to  184G,  much  of  it  never  yet  printed,  and  most  of  the  rest  of 
it  only  to  be  found  in  old  books,  magazines,  newspapers  and  gov- 
ernment reports,  of  which  few  copies  exist,  will  fill  about  250  pages 
like  this,  and,  of  course,  the  scope  of  this  volume  will  not  allow 
full  quotation  of  this  immense  mass. 

The  reader  may  rest  assured,  however,  that  the  quotations  from 
it,  in  the  chapter  on  the  ''Truth  About  the  Relations  of  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Company  to  the  American  Exploration,  Occupation  and 
Settlement  of  the  Oregon  Territory,"  are  perfectly  fair  samples  of 
the  whole. 

It  being  an  absolutely  indispensable  postulate  of  the  Whitman 
Saved  Oregon  Story  that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  constantly 
and  bitterly  opposed  Americans  getting  to  or  settling  in  Oregon, 
it  goes  without  saying  that  these  quotations  have  been  carefully 
omitted  from  the  books  and  magazines  and  newspaper  articles  advo- 
cating that  story. 

Undoubtedly,  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  as  was  their  duty  as 
British  subjects,  desired  and  hoped  that  England  would  succeed  in 
retaining  that  part  of  the  Oregon  Territory  north  and  west  of  the 
Columbia  (being  all  that  was  really  in  dis])ute  after  1824),  but 
they  understood  perfectly  well,  as  did  the  governments  of  England 
and  the  United  States,  that  by  the  express  terms  of  the  Treaties  of 
1818  and  1827  no  settlements  made  by  either  party,  while  those 
treaties  remained  in  force,  could  in  any  way  affect  the  question  of 
the  title  to  the  country,  and  that  till  the  treaty  of  1827  was  abro- 
gated, and  a  boundary  line  established,  the  citizens  and  subjects  of 
each  nation  had  exactly  the  same  rights  to  be  in,  any  part  of  the 
Old  Oregon  Territory. 


INTRODUCTION  17 

My  investigations  have  been  entirely  independent  of  all  others, 
and  every  conclusion  arrived  at  has  been  forced  upon  me  by  the 
irresistible  weight  of  the  evidence.  My  opinions,  however,  like  the 
opinions  of  other  people  on  historical  questions,  are  not  of  the 
slightest  consequence,  any  farther  than  they  are  a  faithful  and 
honest  reflection  of  the  valid  evidence,  and  I  have  never  asked  any 
one  to  accept  my  opinions,  but  only  to  examine  the  evidence. 

Much  of  the  most  vital  part  of  that  evidence  has  never  hereto- 
fore been  accessible  to  historical  students  even,  except  in  my  manu- 
scripts, and  much  less  to  the  general  public,  and  while,  for  reasons 
already  stated,  I  cannot  even  now  aflord  to  print  all  I  should  like  to 
of  it,  there  is  enough  herein,  it  seems  to  me,  to  convince  any  candid 
mind : 

First,  that  ^larcus  Whitman  did  not  save  Oregon,  or  any  part 
of  Oregon,  to  the  United  States. 

Second,  that  no  thought  of  any  possibility  of  doing  any  such  a 
thing  was  in  his  mind  when  he  started  to  ride  to  the  States. 

Third,  that  about  the  region  really  in  dispute  between  the  two 
countries,  that  is,  the  part  north  and  west  of  the  Columbia,  Whit- 
man not  only  knew  nothing  of  the  slightest  value  to  communicate 
to  the  national  government  in  the  spring  of  1843,  but  learned  noth- 
ing about  it  till  nearly  three  years  later,  and  then  learned  it,  not 
from  his  own  explorations,  or  those  of  any  of  his  associates  in  the 
American  Board  Mission,  but  from  the  report  of  an  exploring  party 
sent  into  the  Puget's  Sound  country  from  the  settlement  in  the 
Willamette  Valley,  in  the  autumn  of  1845. 

Fourth,  that  there  was  not  the  slightest  danger  of  the  loss  of 
any  part  of  Oregon  if  no  missionary  had  ever  gone  there. 

Fifth,  that  there  was  really  in  dispute  between  the  United  States 
and  Great  Britain,  after  1824,  only  the  region  north  and  west  of  the 
Columbia  River. 

Sixth,  that  the  national  government  had  very  much  fuller  infor- 
mation about  Oregon  prior  to  1843,  from  the  reports  of  American 
fur  traders  and  government  explorers,  than  it  has  had  about  any 
other  territorial  acquisition  we  have  ever  made  on  this  continent 
on  the  day  of  its  final  accomplishment,  and  that  before  Whitman 
went  to  Oregon,  in  183G,  or  even  the  Methodist  missionaries  went 
there,  in  1834,  it  was  generally  understood  throughout  the  country 
that  Oregon  was  easily  accessible  by  wagons  over  the  low  passes  in 
the  Rocky  Mountains,  especially  the  South  Pass. 

Seventh,  that  Marcus  Whitman  was  not  in  any  sense  of  the  term 
a  great  man,  and  that,  though  he  was  undoubtedly  a  very  zealous 
missionary,  he  was  far  from  being  a  wise,  or  a  far-seeing,  or  a 
magnanimous,  or  a  prudent,  or  a  successful  one. 


18  IXTRODUCTION 

The  Missi 0)1(11'!/  Herald,  the  official  orj^an  of  the  American  Board, 
in  its  issue  for  July,  1848,  on  page  237,  prefaced  an  account  of  the 
dreadful  massacre  (Nov.  29-Dec.  8,  1847),  in  which  Dr.  and  Mrs. 
\Miitman  and  twelve  others  were  murdered  by  the  Indians,  among 
whom  he  had  been  missionarying  for  eleven  years,  with  the  follow- 
ing 102  words  of  biography  of  ^larcus  Whitman.  As  the  secretaries 
of  the  Board  had  absolute  control  of  the  columns  of  the  Missionary 
Herald,  and  as  they  had  before  them  all  the  correspondence  of  the 
mission,  including  ^Yhitman's  own  extravagant  claims  of  great  ser- 
vice to  the  government,  and  also  had  reasonably  fresh  in  their  mem- 
ories all  that  Whitman  said  when  in  Boston  (March  30-April  8, 
1843),  about  the  origin  and  purpose  of  his  ride,  and  as  they  have 
never  been  in  the  least  degree  ''backward  about  coming  forward" 
with  claims  of  good  accomplished  in  any  direction  by  their  mission- 
aries, and  as  they  well  knew  that  in  this  account  of  the  massacre 
they  were  chronicling  the  utter  destruction  of  their  Oregon  mis- 
sion, which  had  cost  them  some  $40,000,  and  also  well  knew  that 
every  one  of  their  readers,  in  the  sympathy  aroused  by  his  tragic 
end,  would  be  in  most  receptive  and  least  critical  mood  concerning 
any  claims  they  might  make  for  the  value  of  Dr.  Whitman's  life 
and  work,  what  is  more  evident  than  that  if  they  had  regarded  him 
as  in  any  way  a  remarkable  man,  or  believed  that  their  Oregon 
mission  had  in  any  manner  favorably  affected  the  political  destinies 
of  the  Oregon  country,  much  more  if  they  had  believed  that  the 
mission  as  a  whole,  or  Whitman  as  an  individual,  had  ''Saved  Ore- 
gon," or  any  part  of  Oregon  to  the  nation,  they  would  then  have 
claimed  it? 

Instead  of  which,  they  published  the  following  absolutely  truth- 
ful sketch  of  his  life,  a  sketch  whose  correctness  no  critic  of  the 
Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  is  disposed  to  question  in  the  slight- 
est: 

''Doctor  Whitman  was  born  in  Rushville,  in  the  State  of  New 
York,  Sept.  4,  1802.  He  joined  the  church  in  that  place  in  Janu- 
ary, 1824,  though  he  dated  his  conversion  from  a  revival  in  Plain- 
field,  Massachusetts,  in  1819. 

"He  gave  himself  to  the  missionary  work  in  1834.  In  February, 
1835,  he  went  to  Oregon  for  the  first  time.  Having  returned  the 
same  year,  he  was  married  in  February,  1836;  and  in  the  following 
month  he  set  out  a  second  time  for  his  chosen  field  of  labor.  He 
made  a  visit  to  the  Atlantic  States  in  the  spring  of  1843,  being 
called  thither  by  the  business  of  the  mission.  He  was  a  diligent 
and  self-denying  laborer  in  the  work  to  which  he  consecrated  his 
time  and  energies.  In  the  last  letter  received  from  Uim  he  described 
at  considerable  length  his  plans  and  hopes  in  regard  to  the  Indians, 


INTRODUCTION  19 

showing  his  interest  not  only  in  the  Kayuses,  but  in  more  distant 
tribes." 

Nothing  more  did  the  Missionary  Herald  say  about  Marcus 
Whitman's  life  and  deeds  till  its  issue  of  December,  1800,  in  which 
appeared  its  first  mention  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story. 
Much  better  would  it  have  been  for  Whitman's  memory  in  the  end, 
as  well  as  for  that  of  all  his  associates  in  the  mission,  if  nothing 
but  these  162  truthful  words  had  ever  been  printed  concerning  his 
life. 

Not  a  single  advocate  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  in 
book,  magazine  or  newspaper,  has  ever  been  honest  enough  with 
his  readers  to  even  allude  to  this  biographical  sketch  of  Whitman, 
much  less  to  quote  it. 

In  my  study  of  this  subject  I  have  depended  on  "Greenhow's  His- 
tory of  Oregon  and  California,"  and  John  Fiske's  "Discovery  of 
America"  for  the  history  of  the  Spanish  explorations  of  the  Ore- 
gon coast,  but  for  everything  later  than  the  Nootka  treaty  I  have 
in  all  cases  gone  to  original  sources,  whenever  possible  to  obtain 
access  to  them,  in  no  case  trusting  to  any  historian's  account  of  an 
exploration  by  land  or  sea  when  an  account  written  by  the  explor- 
ers themselves  could  be  obtained,  nor  to  any  "Abridgment"  of 
"Debates  in  Congress,"  but  going  to  the  full  official  report  in  the 
"Debates  in  Congress,"  "Annals  of  Congress,"  and  "Congressional 
Globe,"  nor  to  anybody's  summary  of  the  reports  of  committees  of 
the  House  and  Senate,  but  to  the  full  reports  in  the  bound  volumes 
of  executive  documents  of  the  two  Houses,  nor  to  any  one's  state- 
ment of  the  results  of  the  negotiations  with  England  and  Russia 
about  Oregon,  and  with  Spain  about  Florida  and  the  southwest 
boundary  of  Louisiana,  and  the  south  boundary  of  Oregon,  and 
with  France  about  the  Louisiana  Purchase,  and  with  England  about 
the  questions  settled  by  the  Ashburton  Treaty,  and  the  Treaty  of 
1863,  concerning  the  claims  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  and  the 
Puget's  Sound  Agricultural  Company,  but  to  the  official  reports  of 
the  negotiations.  I  have  myself  made  every  investigation,  except  in 
the  very  few  cases  where  I  acknowledge  indebtedness  to  others,  and 
have  taken  the  utmost  pains  to  verify  the  accuracy  of  my  work,  and, 
knowing  well  how  easily  mistakes  are  made  in  copying,  T  shall  be 
greatly  obliged  if  any  inaccurate  quotation,  or  any  error  of  fact  is 
found,  if  the  finder  will  have  the  kindness  to  notify  me  of  the  same. 
I  hope  that  the  enormous  labor  and  pains  I  have  bestowed  on  this 
subject  will  make  this  book  merit  Prof.  John  Fiske's  commendation, 
in  his  letter  to  me,  which  is  published  in  my  discussion  of  Prof. 
Bourne's  "Legend  of  Marcus  Whitman,"  as  follows: 

"You  have  done  your  work  so  thoroughly  that  it  will  not  need 
to  be  done  again." 


20  INTRODUCTION 

It  seems  to  me  best  to  treat  the  Oregon  Expansion  under  the 
following  heads : 

PART     I . 

1.  The  period  of  early  maritime  discovery  and  exploration 
(154,'M7;>2l.  This  })eriod  outlined  the  coast  and  determined  the 
Jiarbors,  and  discovered  the  mouth  of  the  great  navigable  river 
which  drains  nearly  all  the  Old  Oregon  Territory. 

2.  The  period  of  overland  exploration  and  discovery  and  of  the 
fur  traders  (1804-1840).  This  period  discovered  every  imi)ortant 
natural  feature — mountain  ranges,  peaks  and  passes,  plains,  river 
valleys,  lakes  (of  any  considerable  size),  desert  regions,  fertile 
areas,  forests  and  prairies  of  the  whole  Oregon  Territory  (south  of 
49  degrees),  except  that  part  north  and  west  of  the  Columbia,  being 
about  55,000  to  58,000  square  miles. 

It  is  not  claimed  that  all  the  minute  details  of  the  geography  of 
Oregon  were  known,  even  forty  years  later  than  1842,  but  all  the 
great  features  were  perfectly  well  known  to  the  fur  traders  and  to 
the  national  government  before  there  was  any  excitement  in  the 
States  about  any  missionaries  going  to  Oregon,  and  no  missionary, 
Methodist,  Presbyterian,  Congregationalist  or  Catholic,  ever  dis- 
covered any  important  geographical  feature  of  any  part  of  the  Old 
Oregon  Territory. 

3.  The  beginning  of  real  American  settlement  (1832). 

4.  The  discovery  of  a  route  for  and  the  development  of  the  first 
transcontinental  wagon  road. 

5.  Governmental  action  in  relation  to  Oregon. 

(a)  The  diplomacy  of,  the  Oregon  question. 

(b)  Executive  and  Congressional  action  on  the  Oregon  ques- 
tion. 

6.  The  truth  about  the  relation  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company 
to  the  American  exploration,  occupation  and  settlement  of  Oregon. 

PART    II. 

THE    MISSIONARY    EPISODE. 

7.  The  truth  about  the  origin  of  missions  to  the  Oregon  Indians. 

8.  The  establishment  and  continuance  of  missions  to  the  Ore- 
gon Indians. 

(a)  The  Methodist  Mission  (1834-1844-0). 

(b)  The  A.  B.  C.  F.  Mission  (1835-1848). 

(c)  The  Catholic  Mission  to  the  Flatheads  and  allied  tribes, 
October,  1841,  to  1850,  and  September,  18GG,  to  the  pres- 
ent time. 


INTRODUCTION  21 

9.  The  long-concealed  facts  about  the  origin,  purpose  and  re- 
sults of  Whitman's  ride  to  the  States  begun  Oct.  3,  1842. 

10.  The  decadence  of  the  American  Board  Mission  after  1839. 

11.  All  that  Whitman  ever  claimed  about  his  ride  and  the  bene- 
fits of  his  mission  in  his  letters  after  his  return  to  Oregon. 

12.  The  true  causes  of  the  Whitman  massacre. 

13.  An  examination  of  the  "testimony"  given  in  support  of  the 
Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story. 

Necessarily  there  must  be  some  overlapping  in  time  of  some  of 
these  periods,  it  being  impossible  to  draw  hard  and  fast  chronolog- 
ical lines  between  most  of  them. 


WILLIAM    I.    MARSHALL 


A    BIOGRAPHICAL    SKETCH. 

William  Isaac  Marshall  was  born  June  25tli,  1840,  at  Fitchburg, 
Worcester  County,  Massachusetts.  His  father  was  William  Mar- 
shall, a  mason  contractor,  and  his  mother  was  Fiorina  (Weeks) 
Marshall.  The  first  American  ancestor  of  the  Marshall  family  came 
to  Boston  from  London,  England,  in  1635,  on  the  ship  Hopewell. 

Mr.  Marshall's  early  educational  training  was  limited  to  the 
grammar  school  and  one  year  at  high  school.  His  father  died  when 
he  was  seventeen  years  old,  and  he  was  forced  to  labor  to  assist  his 
mother  in  the  care  and  support  of  the  family.  At  the  age  of  eighteen 
he  commenced  teaching  in  Massachusetts,  and  a  few  months  later, 
January,  1859,  he  moved  westward  to  Conneaut,  Ohio,  where  he 
taught  school  for  |10  per  month  and  "boarded  round."  In  18G0  he 
made  the  acquaintance  of  the  late  Prof.  P.  R.  Spencer,  originator  of 
the  Spencerian  system  of  penmanship,  and  became  a  student  of  his, 
and  graduated  under  his  personal  instruction.  After  this  he  taught 
school  in  several  towns  in  Canada,  and  was  principal  of  the  schools 
of  the  borough  of  Manchester,  now  a  part  of  Pittsburg,  Pa.  Follow- 
ing this  experience,  he  acted  for  a  time  as  agent  for  the  ''Spencerian 
System,"  and  also  became  part  owner  in  the  "Capital  City  Business 
College,"  at  Columbus,  Ohio,  and  later  sole  owner  of  the  institution. 
While  conducting  this  college  he  was  in  correspondence  with  an 
old  schoolmate,  who  induced  him  to  go  to  Virginia  City,  Montana, 
to  the  famous  Alder  Gulch  gold  mines.  He  remained  there  nearly 
ten  years,  working  his  mines;  was  also  principal  of  the  schools  at 
Virginia  City,  and  was  superintendent  of  the  schools  of  Madison 
County,  Montana.  While  there  he  studied  law  and  was  admitted 
to  the  bar  of  Montana,  and  later,  on  his  return  East,  to  practice  in 
the  United  States  courts. 

Returning  to  Massachusetts  in  1876,  he  began  lecturing  on  "Gold 
Mines  and  Gold  Mining,"  "The  Yellowstone  National  Park"  and  kin- 
dred subjects,  and  was  the  original  lecturer,  with  illustrations,  on 
American  suljects.  As  a  lecturer  he  was  accorded  a  place  continu- 
ously in  the  leading  lecture  courses  of  the  East,  and  occupied  the 


24  A    BIOGRAPHICAL    SKETCH 

platform  in  all  the  large  cities  of  the  Eastern  and  Middle  States. 
He  continued  on  the  lecture  platform  till  1S87,  when  he  moved  to 
Chicago  to  enter  an  insurance  partnership  with  his  brother.  This 
partnership  he  left  to  become  a  principal  in  the  schools  of  the  city, 
and  was  at  the  head  of  the  William  E.  Gladstone  School  at  the 
time  of  his  death,  October  30th,  190G. 

For  twenty-nine  years  he  had  been  studying  about  the  ''Acquisi- 
tion of  the  Old  Oregon  Territory  to  the  United  States."  In  1904  he 
published  "History  vs.  The  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story,"  and  in 
1905  issued  the  pamphlet,  "The  Hudson  Bay  Company's  Archives 
Furnish  No  Support  to  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story,"  and 
shortly  before  death  claimed  him,  had  finished  the  manuscript  for 
this  book. 

He  was  a  member  of  the  Third  Unitarian  Church  of  Chicago,  and 
for  sixteen  years  its  secretary  and  treasurer. 

He  was  a  Mason,  one  of  the  organizers  of  and  first  master  of 
Columbian  Lodge  No.  819,  A.  F.  &  A.  M. ;  a  member  of  the  George 
Howland  Club,  Principals'  Club  of  Chicago,  and  of  the  American 
Historical  Association,  the  National  Geographical  Society,  and  an 
honorary  member  of  the  Oregon  Historical  Society. 

In  1804  Mr.  Marshall  married  Miss  Ellen  P.  Foster,  and  one 
child,  Ellen  Foster  Marshall,  was  born  to  this  union.  She  died  four 
years  previous  to  her  father's  death.  Mrs.  Marshall  still  survives 
them. 

Chicago,  August,  1909.  Mrs.  Ellen  Foster  Marshall. 


ACQUISITION  OF  OREGON 


LONG    SUPPRESSED   EVIDENCE 
ABOUT      MARCUS      WHITMAN 


PART  ONE. 


CHAPTER      I. 

THE   UNIQUE   FEATURES   OF   THE   HISTORY   OF   THE 
ACQUISITION    OF   OREGON. 

The  Old  Oregon  Territory  comprises  all  our  territory  on  this 
continent  west  of  the  summit  of  the  main  range  of  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains between  42  degrees  and  49  degrees,  north  latitude,  covering 
the  present  States  of  Oregon,  Washington  and  Idaho,  with  so  much 
of  Montana  (about  28,000  square  miles)  as  is  west  of  the  main 
range,  and  so  much  (about  13,000  square  miles)  of  Wyoming  as  is 
west  of  the  main  range  and  north  of  42  degrees,  in  all  about  292,000 
square  miles,  or  nearly  1/12  of  all  our  domain  on  this  continent, 
and  the  true  history  of  its  acquisition  by  the  United  States  is  not 
only  full  of  most  romantic  incidents,  but  is  unique  in  the  following 
respects : 

1.  It  is  that  part  of  our  territory  to  which  our  chain  of  title  is 
not  only  as  long  as  to  any  other,  but  is  very  much  more  curiously 
complex  than  to  any  other  region  we  possess. 

2.  It  is  the  only  territory  on  this  continent  to  which  we  have 
ever  claimed  a  title  by  priority  of  (a)  discovery,  (b)  exploration 
and  (c)  settlement. 

3.  It  is  the  only  acquisition  of  territory  on  this  continent  to 
which  we  have  obtained  an  undisputed  title  without  either  conquest 
or  cash  purchase. 

4.  It  was  the  first  territory  on  the  Pacific  Coast  to  which  we 
ever  made  any  claim,  and  the  first  one  on  that  coast  to  which  we 
established  a  title. 

5.  It  was  the  first  Pacific  Coast  region  to  which  there  was  any 
considerable  overland  migration  from  the  States  east  of  the  great 
plains. 


26  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

6.  It  is  the  only  part  of  our  territorial  acquisition  concerning 
whose  great  value  to  us  the  foresight  of  our  greatest  statesmen 
was  so  clear  and  so  unanimous  that,  while  it  was  separated  from 
our  most  western  settlements  by  a  full  thousand  miles  of  little 
known  and  wholly  unsettled  wilderness,  they  all — Jefferson,  Madi- 
son, Monroe,  J.  Q.  Adams,  Jackson,  Van  l^uren,  Tyler,  l*olk,  Tierce^ 
Uuchanan,  Calhoun,  Clay,  CaHatin,  Everett,  Webster,  \\alker,  For- 
syth, Richard  Rush,  Henrj'  Middleton,  Cambreling,  Choate,  More- 
head,  Floyd,  Robt.  J.  Walker,  J.  W.  Taylor,  Sevier,  King,  Benton, 
Linn,  Woodbury,  John  Reed,  Caleb  Gushing,  and  many  others — in- 
sisted on  no  line  more  favorable  to  Great  Britain  than  40  degrees 
to  the  Pacific — and,  as  early  as  1826,  J.  Q.  Adams'  administration 
notified  the  English  government  that  ''49  degrees  to  the  Coast  was 
our  ultimatum." 

7.  It  is  our  only  acquisition  of  territory  on  this  continent 
which  had  been  very  extensively  explored  by  land  and  sea,  alike  by 
our  private  citizens  on  fur  trading  and  scientific  expeditions,  and 
by  government  parties  under  command  of  oflficers  of  our  army  and 
navy,  before  our  title  to  it  was  fully  established.  The  reports  of 
their  explorations  had  not  only  been  widely  read  by  our  own  citi- 
zens, but  also  republished  in  London  and  Dublin,  and  translated 
into  the  French,  German  and  Dutch  languages,  and  published  in 
those  countries  in  1814  and  1810,  and  between  1836  and  184L 

8.  It  is  the  only  territory  not  undisputably  ours  which  Great 
Britain  captured  from  us  in  the  W^ar  of  1812,  and  Avas  compelled  to 
restore  to  us  by  the  Treaty  of  Ghent. 

0.  It  is  the  only  territory  in  which  for  nearly  a  whole  genera- 
tion (1818  to  1846)  the  citizens  and  subjects  of  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States  were,  by  wise  and  freely  executed  treaties,  at 
liberty  to  live  on  a  footing  of  perfect  equality,  and  where,  during 
all  that  time — as  every  particle  of  the  contemporaneous  corre- 
spondence of  the  Americans  shows — every  American  who  entered 
the  territory — fur  traders,  missionaries,  scientists,  explorers  or 
settlers — was  very  kindly  received  and  most  hospitably  entertained 
by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company's  officers  at  all  their  posts;  and,  if 
they  desired  to  remain  in  any  other  capacity  than  fur  traders,  were 
aided  in  the  most  liberal  manner  to  establish  themselves  as  mis- 
sionaries or  as  settlers. 

If  Americans  sought  to  engage  in  the  fur  trade  they  were  met 
with  the  strongest  competition  that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company 
could  wage,  but  that  competition  was  as  fair  as,  and  no  fiercer  than, 
the  rival  American  fur  traders  waged  against  each  other  in  regions 
far  east  of  those  ever  occupied  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company's 
posts. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  27 

10.  It  is  the  acquisition  to  which  there  was  far  less  opposition, 
whether  we  consider  the  relative  numbers  of  those  who  spoke  and 
wrote  against  and  for  it,  or  their  weight  in  the  councils  of  the 
nation,  than  to  any  other  acquisition  of  territory  we  have  ever  made, 
except  the  Florida  Purchase  and  the  Gadsden  Purchase,  to  both  of 
which  there  was  practically  no  opposition. 

11.  It  is  that  part  of  our  territory  about  which,  before  March 
1,  1843  (/.  e.,  more  than  three  years  before  our  title  to  it  was  fully 
established,  and  before  Marcus  Whitman  could  have  reached  St. 
Louis,  let  alone  Washington),  we  had  had  more  numerous  and  more 
important  diplomatic  negotiations,  more  debates  in  Congress,  more 
committee  reports  to  Congress — all  unanimous  by  the  committees 
and  unanimously  adopted  by  Congress^ — more  books  and  magazine 
articles  printed  for  general  reading,  more  reports  printed  by  the 
government  for  gratuitous  distribution,  and  therefore  far  more 
knowledge  possessed  alike  by  the  government  at  Washington  and 
by  the  people  of  the  country  generally,  than  about  any  other  terri- 
torial acquisition  we  have  ever  made  on  this  continent,  even  on  the 
day  such  other  acquisition  was  finally  accomplished. 

12.  It  was  the  region  which  originated  so  much  of  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  as  declares  ''That  the  American  continents,  by  the  free 
and  independent  position  they  have  assumed,  are  to  be  henceforth 
no  longer  regarded  as  open  to  colonization  by  any  European  na- 
tion," this  having  been  first  stated  July  22,  1823,  in  two  letters  of 
instructions  from  John  Q.  Adams,  Secretary  of  State,  to  Henry 
Middleton,  Minister  to  Russia,  and  Richard  Rush,  our  Minister  to 
England,  who  were  then  negotiating  respecting  the  Oregon  bound- 
ary. 

13.  It  is  the  only  portion  of  our  territory  where  for  more  than 
twenty-five  years  all  British  subjects  were  liable  to  arrest  and  trial 
by  the  ofiicers  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  for  minor  otfenses, 
and  where,  between  British  subjects,  all  civil  cases  involving  no 
more  than  200  pounds  were  also  tried  before  the  Hudson's  Bay 
(.'ompany's  officers,  while  for  graver  offenses  British  subjects  were 
liable  to  be  arrested  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company's  officers  and 
sent  to  Upper  Canada  for  trial,  and  civil  cases  involving  more  than 
200  pounds,  between  British  subjects,  were  also  sent  to  Upper  Can- 
ada for  trial  (Cf.  Act  of  Parliament,  July  2,  1821,  quoted  in  full 
by  Greenhow,  Ed.  1845,  p.  467). 

14.  It  is  the  only  part  of  our  territory  where,  for  more  than 
three  years,  the  citizens  of  the  United  States  and  the  subjects  of 
Great  Britain  jointly  supported  a  provisional  government  organized 
by  the  people  living  in  Oregon,  without  any  authorization  therefor 
or  assistance  therein  from  either  home  government,  and  without 
those  of  either  nationality  losing  their  allegiance  to  their  respective 


28  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

governments.  In  the  lanf?nage  of  a  memorial  of  this  provisional 
government,  dated  June  28,  1844,  ''By  treaty  stipulations,  the  terri- 
tory has  become  a  kind  of  neutral  ground,  in  the  occupancy  of  which 
the  citizens  of  the  United  States  and  the  subjects  of  Great  Britain 
have  equal  rights  and  ought  to  have  equal  protection." 

Although  the  Treaty  of  1840,  fixing  49  degrees  as  the  north 
boundary  of  Oregon,  the  news  of  which  reached  Oregon  Nov.  12, 
1846,  ended  *'the  neutral  territory"  matter,  and  also  all  authority 
of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  to  arrest  and  try  British  subjects 
in  Oregon,  or  send  them  to  Canada  for  trial,  this  provisional  gov- 
ernment continued  to  be  the  only  government  in  Oregon  till,  on 
March  3,  1849,  Joseph  Lane  of  Indiana  (having  arrived  at  Oregon 
City  the  day  before)  assumed  his  duties  as  the  first  regularly  ap- 
pointed territorial  governor  of  Oregon,  under  the  Act  of  Congress 
of  Aug.  14,  1848,  creating  the  Territory  of  Oregon,  and  providing 
for  its  government. 

15.  It  is  the  only  territory  we  have  acquired  concerning  the 
obtaining  of  which  there  has  been  injected  into  our  history,  and 
very  widely  circulated  and  believed,  a  pure  legend  known  as  the 
Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story,  a  fiction  for  the  history  of  whose 
genesis  and  development,  and  the  proof  of  whose  total  falsity  the 
reader  is  referred  to  Part  II.  of  this  book. 

It  is  the  purpose  of  this  book  (which  is  the  result  of  more  than 
twenty-eight  years'  careful  study  of  the  subject)  to  establish  be- 
yond any  possibility  of  dispute  the  correctness  of  all  the  foregoing 
fifteen  propositions,  and  to  state  without  fear  or  favor  all  the 
important  facts  about  the  acquisition  of  Oregon,  as  they  appear  in 
the  original  contemi)oraneous  documents,  many  of  which  have  not 
heretofore  been  published  (arid  the  more  important  of  which  that 
relate  to  Marcus  Whitman  have  been  deliberately  sui>pressed  for  the 
past  half  century  or  more  by  those  advocates  of  the  \N'hitnian  Saved 
Oregon  Story  who  have  possessed  or  controlled  them). 

Conscious  of  his  lack  of  a  polished  literary  style,  the  author  will 
permit  each  of  the  imjtortant  actors  in  the  Oregon  Expansion  to 
tell,  as  far  as  possible,  in  his  own  words,  his  i)art  therein:  and  as 
several  of  the  positions  he  seeks  to  establish  are  directly  contrary 
to  the  ideas  generally  believed  about  the  history  of  the  acquisition 
of  the  Oregon  Territory,  he  juust  crave  the  reader's  indulgence  if  he 
not  only  cites  very  many  original  authorities,  but  if  he  also  quotes 
very  fully  from  nuiny  of  them,  and  especially  from  those  which 
other  writers  upon  the  subject  have  neglected  to  examine,  or  to 
mention  ;  or,  in  the  case  of  a  few  that  they  have  mentioned,  to 
quote  fairly,  so  that  the  reader  could  judge  for  himself  whether  or 
cot  the  documents  really  sustain  the  claims  that  the  advocates  of 
the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  have  advanced. 


CHAPTER     II. 

THE    PERIOD    OF    MARITIME    DISCOVERY. 

The  true  story  of  the  acquisition  of  the  Old  Oregon  Territory 
must  be  sought  in  many  an  unfamiliar  book  and  many  an  unpub- 
lished manuscript,  and  is  all  too  little  known,  even  by  those  who 
are  very  well  read  in  the  history  of  our  States  east  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains,  but  one  whose  interest,  as  well  as  value,  to  all  patriotic 
Americans  yields  rich  compensation  for  the  time  needed  to  rapidly 
review  it. 

The  history  of  the  Oregon  Territory  vividly  recalls  the  story  of 
Cinderella. 

From  1818  to  1848  the  Oregon  Territory  largely  occupied  public 
attention,  while  all  else  we  now  own  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains — 
then  belonging  to  Mexico  and  Russia — was  rarely  mentioned.  But 
the  discovery  of  gold  in  California  in  1848,  and  later  of  the  rich 
silver  mines  in  Nevada,  so  fixed  attention  on  these  States  that  for 
more  than  thirty  years  little  was  heard  of  the  Oregon  Territory 
till,  a  few  years  since,  it  suddenly  appeared ;  that  when  the  prince 
came  seeking  what  Pacific  Coast  section  could  wear  the  dainty 
slipper  of  highest  prosperity,  it  best  fitted,  not  the  golden  nor  even 
the  silver  State,  but  their  long-neglected,  patiently  drudging  sister, 
''Where  Rolls  the  Oregon."  The  exports  of  Oregon  in  1880  having 
exceeded,  per  capita,  those  of  any  other  State  in  the  Union,  and 
with  the  speedy  completion  thereafter  of  transcontinental  railroad 
communication  with  it,  first  by  the  Oregon  Short  Line  division  of 
the  Union  Pacific,  soon  followed  by  the  Northern  Pacific,  and  a  few 
years  later  by  the  Great  Northern,  it  began  to  receive  again  its 
proper  share  of  attention  from  the  people  of  the  rest  of  the  country, 
who  had  almost  entirely  ignored  it  for  a  whole  generation. 

As  in  the  case  of  all  other  territory  on  this  continent,  any  part 
of  our  title  to  which  is  derived  from  Spain,  the  first  link  in  our 
curiously  complex  chain  of  title  to  Oregon  is  written  in  the  Bull  of 
Pope  Alexander  V.,  in  1493,  granting  Spain  exclusive  rights  of 
trade,  navigation,  fishery  and  conquest  in  all  seas  not  before  occu- 
pied by  a  Christian  prince  or  people,  which  they  might  find  in  west- 
ward exploration,  as  Pope  Nicholas  had,  in  1454,  granted  to  Port- 
ugal for  southward  and  eastward  exploration. 


30  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

In  1494  Spain  and  Portugal  .signed  the  famous  "Treaty  of  Par- 
tition of  the  Ocean,"  which  gave  Portugal  everything  east  of  a 
meridian  passing  370  leagues  west  of  the  Cape  Verde  Islands,  and 
Spain  everything  west  of  that  line.  The  east  coast  of  Brazil  being 
afterwards  found  to  extend  east  of  that  meridian,  this  treaty  gave 
that  iinniense  empire  to  Portugal,  much  to  the  chagrin  of  Spain, 
which  had  hoped  to  monopolize  the  New  World.  In  1519  Cortez 
landed  in  Afexico  and  soon  conquered  it. 

Ex]>loration  crept  northward  along  the  Pacific  Coast  from  ^lex- 
ico  very  slowly  till,  in  1543,  Cabrillo  is  supposed  to  have  reached  43° 
N.  Lat.,  which  is  one  degree  N.  of  the  line  which,  by  the  Florida 
treaty  of  1810,  was  established  as  the  S.  boundary  of  Oregon. 

About  1543  Spain  concluded  that  the  less  known  about  the 
coasts  and  countries  north  of  Mexico,  the  less  likely  would  they  be 
to  have  otiier  nations  contending  with  them  for  the  commerce  and 
dominion  of  the  Pacific  and  its  coasts,  and  for  many  years  they  dis- 
couraged all  farther  exploration,  and  by  most  stringent  regulations 
strove  to  prevent  the  too-rapid  development  of  Spanish  America. 

No  Spaniard  could  emigrate  to  America,  no  new  settlement  be 
formed  there,  no  new  sea  or  country  explored  without  express  per- 
mission of  the  King,  which  was  very  diflScult  to  obtain ;  and  the 
results  of  exploration  were  often  concealed  or  tardily  and  imper- 
fectly announced.  Nothing  could  be  cultivated  or  manufactured  for 
commerce  in  America  which  could  be  imported  from  Spain :  and  no 
intercourse  could  be  carried  on  between  Spanish  colonies,  or  be- 
tween them  and  Spain,  except  in  government  vessels,  or  those  under 
its  immediate  supervision.  The  Spanish  American  could  have  no 
correspondence  with  other  countries,  and  foreigners  were  prohibited 
from  touching  territories  claimed  by  Spain,  or  even  navigating  the 
seas  in  their  vicinity,  under  pain  of  death.  "\Yhoever,"  says  Hak- 
luyt,  at  the  end  of  the  Kith  century,  "is  acquainted  with  the  Spanish 
and  Portugese  writers  shall  find  that  they  account  all  other  nations 
for  pirates,  rovers  and  thieves  who  visit  any  heathen  coast,  that  they 
have  sailed  by  or  looked  on." 

No  other  exploring  expedition  \N'ent  to  the  N.  W.  Coast  for  sixty 
years,  when,  in  1002-3,  Vizcaino  made  a  fairly  good  survey  of  the 
California  coast,  discovering  and  remaining  some  time  in  the  lovely 
Bay  of  Monterey,  but  saw  no  more  of  Oregon  than  Cabrillo.  His 
voyage  was  attended  with  serious  troubles.  The  scurvy  raged  vio- 
lently, and  they  were  sorely  tried — says  Torquemada,  the  historian 
of  the  expedition — by  their  "chief  enemy  the  N.  W.  wind,"  (which 
is  the  prevailing  summer  wind  of  that  coast,  but)  which,  in  accord- 
ance with  the  general  superstition  of  liis  age,  he  declares  "was 
raised  up  by  the  foe  of  the  human  race,  in  order  to  prevent  the  ad- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  31 

vance  of  the  ships,  and  to  delay  the  discovery  of  those  countries, 
and  the  conversion  of  their  inhabitants  to  the  Catholic  faith." 

Though  annually  the  Spanish  galleons,  on  their  voyages  from  the 
East  Indies  to  Acapulco  sailed  along  the  California  coast  south- 
ward from  Cape  Mendocino,  and  the  Russians,  under  Behring  and 
Tchirikof,  in  1741  and  '42,  had  discovered  and  partly  explored  our 
territory  of  Alaska,  one  hundred  and  sixty  years  passed  after  Viz- 
caino's voyage,  before  Spain  consented  to  any  colonization  of  Cali- 
fornia, or  farther  exploration  of  the  N.  W.  Coast. 

But  while  all  the  Oregon  Coast  remained  thus  untrodden  and 
unseen  by  Europeans,  numerous  fictitious  accounts  were  published 
in  Europe,  of  explorations  there,  and  of  the  discovery  there  of  the 
long  sought  N.  W.  passage  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  the  most 
noted  of  which  were  those  of  Maldonado  and  of  Fonte,  which,  though 
widely  believed,  were  pure  fabrications,  and  of  de  Fuca,  which  (if  it 
had  any  foundation  in  an  actual  voyage)  was  mistaken  in  suppos- 
ing that  the  strait  through  which  he  claimed  to  have  sailed  led 
across  the  continent.  These  fabulous  narratives  are  striking  proofs 
of  the  ignorance,  even  of  the  most  enlightened  nations  of  Europe,  as 
late  as  the  early  years  of  the  18th  century,  concerning  the  shape  and 
extent  of  America,  and  especially  its  North  West  Coasts. 

Spain's  high  pretensions  to  exclusive  ownership  of  America  on 
the  Atlantic  coast  were  successfully  resisted  by  other  European  na- 
tions, and  French,  English,  Dutch  and  Swedish  colonies  had  occu- 
pied that  coast,  from  the  St.  Lawrence  to  some  way  south  of  the 
Savannah,  and  were  slowly  creeping  over  the  Alleghanies  and  along 
The  Great  Lakes  into  the  Mississippi  Valley,  when  the  mighty  strug- 
gle between  France  and  England  for  American  supremacy  ended 
in  the  fatal  defeat  of  Montcalm,  and  the  fall  of  Quebec,  in  1759,  fol- 
lowed by  the  secret  cession  to  Spain,  in  1762,  of  all  the  claims  of 
France  to  territory  west  of  the  Mississippi  River,  and  the  following 
year,  by  her  surrender  to  England  of  all  her  claims  east  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi. 

Spain,  now  fearing  for  the  security  of  her  claims  to  exclusive 
dominion  on  the  Pacific  Coast,  devised  an  extensive  but  unpractical 
scheme  of  colonization  and  exploration,  under  which  between  1769 
and  1779,  eight  missionary  establishments  under  the  charge  of  the 
Franciscans  were  placed  in  the  present  state  of  California,  stretch- 
ing from  San  Diego  north  to  San  Francisco. 

Unlike  the  Jesuits  who  had  had  missions  in  Loiver  California, 
from  1697  to  1767  (when  they  were  expelled  from  Spain  and  all 
Spanish  America),  and  who  had  diligently  explored  the  country  and 
studied  all  its  natural  resources,  the  Franciscans,  who  were  mostly 
from  the  lower  orders  of  society  and  wholly  uneducated  (except  in 
their  church  duties  and  ritual,  and  some  kind  of  industry),  made  no 


32  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

attempt  at  exploration,  niul  no  ellorts  to  acquire  a  knowledge  of  the 
resources  of  Upper  California. 

They  seem  to  have  been  honest,  ]>atient,  well  meaning  men,  who 
labored  heroically  and  faithrully  to  discharge  their  duty  as  they 
understood  it,  but  whose  mental  horizon  was  so  very  narrow,  that 
their  seventy  years'  occupancy  of  the  country  added  scarcely  any- 
thing to  the  world's  knowledge  of  its  climate,  natural  features, 
vegetable  and  animal  productions  or  mineral  resources,  and  under 
^^■hose  regime  California  furnished  nothing  to  the  world's  commerce 
but  hides,  horns  and  tallow. 

ITow  dilferent  the  history  of  the  modern  world  would  have  been 
had  Spain,  in  the  plenitude  of  her  pride  and  power,  explored  Cali- 
fornia in  the  lOth  century,  sufficiently  to  have  discovered  its  rich 
mines  of  gold ! 

Even  in  her  decline,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  18th  and  the  earlier 
years  of  the  10th  century,  had  the  Jesuits  instead  of  the  Franciscans 
been  put  in  charge  of  the  Upper  California  missions  or  had  Spain 
not  crushed  the  energy  and  enterprise  out  of  her  colonists  by  more 
than  200  years  of  repression  of  development,  there  could  scarcely 
have  been  failure  for  more  than  half  a  century  to  find  those  mines  of 
gold,  the  possession  of  which  by  Spain  would  certainly  have  changed 
the  destinies  of  this  country  in  ways  no  man's  imagination  can  con- 
ceive, and  have  exercised  a  profound  and  far-reaching  effect  on  all 
the  later,  modern  history  of  civilized  humanity. 

To  strengthen  her  claims  to  exclusive  ownership  under  the  papal 
bull  by  at  least  a  show  of  occupancy,  in  1774  for  the  first  time  in  171 
years,  the  Si)anish  flag  again  saluted  the  breeze  off  the  Oregon  coast, 
waving  from  the  corvette  Santiago,  under  command  of  Ensign  Juan 
Perez,  whose  explorations  w^ere  so  unsatisfactory  that  the  next  year 
Capt.  Bruno  Heceta  was  sent  in  the  same  corvette,  with  Lieut. 
Bodega  accompanying,  in  the  schooner  Sonora.  The  day  the  battle 
of  Bunker  Hill  was  fought,  they  were  taking  fresh  water  on  board, 
in  the  little  harbor  of  Port  Trinidad,  about  fifty  miles  south  of  the 
Oregon  line. 

Exploring  the  Oregon  coast  with  various  adventures  and  mis- 
haps, on  August  15,  177."),  in  Lat.  4Cr  17',  Tleceta  came  opposite 
an  opening  whence  rushed  too  strong  a  current  to  allow  his  enter- 
ing, though  he  remained  another  day  to  try  it. 

He  named  this  bay  Assumption  Inlet,  but  on  the  charts  pub- 
lished in  Mexico,  after  his  return,  it  is  called  Heceta's  Inlet,  and 
Rio  de  San  Koque.  This  opening  was  the  bay  at  the  mouth  of  the 
"Great  River  of  the  West,"  the  full  discovery,  exploration,  naming 
and  ownership  of  which  was  reserved  for  the  citizens  of  the  new 
nation,  whose  soldiers  were  then  besieging  their  British  foes  in 
Boston. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  33 

In  1776,  the  last  of  Capt.  Jas.  Cook's  famous  exploring  expedi- 
tions sailed  from  England,  mainly  to  determine  the  question  of  a 
northwest  passage  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  Parliament  hav- 
ing amended  an  act  offering  20,000  pounds  reward  to  any  English 
merchant  vessel  discovering  such  a  passage  from  Hudson's  Bay,  so 
that  it  was  offered  to  naval  as  well  as  merchant  ships,  for  any  such 
passage  by  Hudson's  Bay  or  otherwise.  Cook  made  important  dis- 
coveries farther  north,  but  saw  nothing  on  the  Oregon  coast  not 
previously  seen  by  the  Spaniards.  He  was  murdered  in  the  Sand- 
wich Islands,  and  in  December,  1779,  his  ships  anchored  at  Canton, 
China,  where  they  made  a  wholly  unlooked  for  discovery,  of  vastly 
more  commercial  importance  than  all  the  others  they  had  made,  and 
one  which  profoundly  affected  the  destinies  not  only  of  the  Oregon 
Territory,  but  of  the  whole  N.  W.  Coast  of  America,  opening  new 
avenues  to  commerce,  and  within  a  dozen  years  thereafter  sending 
adventurous  vessels  into  every  nook  and  corner  of  that  immense 
stretch  of  coast  which  for  250  years  after  the  conquest  of  Mexico, 
had  only  at  long  intervals,  and  at  a  few  points  been  beheld  by 
white  men. 

As  they  had  touched  here  and  there,  officers  and  crew  had  bar- 
tered to  the  natives  old  clothes,  buttons,  knives,  and  other  things 
TO  them  of  little  or  no  value,  for  rich  furs,  not  as  articles  of  merch- 
andise, but  for  use  on  board  ship,  for  clothes  and  bedding. 

Many  of  them  had  thus  become  spoiled  or  much  damaged. 

When  reported  in  Canton  (whither  no  ship  had  ever  before  come 
from  the  N.  W.  Coast  of  America),  that  Cook's  ships  had  furs,  there 
was  great  excitement,  and  eager  competition,  and  in  a  few  days  for 
what  had  cost  them  little  or  nothing  the  seamen  received  money  and 
goods  to  the  value  of  more  than  $10,000. 

The  news  of  this  immense  profit  stimulated  adventurous  Eng- 
lish and  American  merchants  to  fit  out  vessels  for  this  ''Northwest 
Trade,"  as  it  was  called. 

Irving  well  says  "It  was  as  if  a  new  Gold  Coast  had  been  dis- 
covered." 

Some  of  the  earliest  vessels  in  this  trade  were  commanded  by 
John  Meares,  a  lieutenant  in  the  British  navy  on  half  pay,  but  sail- 
ing under  the  Portugese  flag  to  avoid  the  claims  of  the  British  East 
India  Co.  to  a  monopoly  of  the  commerce  of  the  Pacific,  in  vessels 
under  the  British  flag. 

July  5,  1788,  he  started  to  sail  into  the  bay  at  the  mouth  of  the 
''Great  River  of  the  West,"  but,  frightened  by  the  terrible  breakers, 
hauled  out  without  crossing  the  bar,  and,  though  the  river  must 
then  have  been  at  high  flood,  he  unaccountably  concluded  that  there 
was  no  river  there,  entering  in  his  log-book,  that  "We  can  now 
safely  assert  that  there  is  no  such  river  as  that  of  St.  Roque  exists, 


34  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

as  laid  down  on  the  Spanish  charts;"  and  so  he  rechristened  the  As- 
sumption Inlet  of  Heceta  as  Deception  Bay,  and  the  bold  cape  on  its 
north  side  as  Cape  Disappointment. 

Yet,  so  hard  pressed  lor  argument  were  the  British  commission- 
ers, api)ointed  in  1820  to  treat  with  our  Government  on  the  ques- 
tion of  title  to  the  Oregon  Territory,  that  they  actually  quoted  this 
paragraph  from  Meares'  Narrative,  as  proof  that  he  had  actually 
discovered  the  mouth  of  the  river,  whose  existence  is  in  it  positively 
denied. 

Meares'  vessels  were  seized  in  1789,  by  the  Spanish  Commander 
at  Nootka  Sound,  as  intruders  on  Spanish  territory. 

This  led  to  a  vigorous  diplomatic  correspondence  betv\-een  the 
English,  Spanish  and  French  governments,  some  phases  of  which, 
owing  to  the  famous  ''Family  Compact"  between  the  kings  of  France 
and  Spain,  and  to  the  complications  of  the  French  Revolution,  are 
very  interesting  and  curious,  if  space  i)ermitted  entering  into  par- 
ticulars of  them,  to  extensive  war  preparations  on  the  part  of  most 
of  the  powers  of  Europe,  and  to  various  demands  and  counter  pro- 
posals, one  of  which  demands  made  by  England  was  that  the 
Northern  line  of  exclusive  Spanish  dominion  should  be  fixed  at  the 
40th  parallel  of  North  Latitude,  from  the  Pacific  to  the  Missouri 
River, 

Fortunately  for  our  national  welfare,  Spain  absolutely  refused 
any  limitation  on  the  North,  and  the  rapid  progress  of  the  French 
Revolution  compelling  England  to  abate  her  unjustifiable  demands, 
finally,  October  28,  1790,  the  first  treaty  ever  made  between  any 
European  nations  concerning  the  N.  W.  Coast  of  America,  and  gen- 
erally known  as  the  "Nootka  Treaty,"  was  signed. 

John  Ledyard,  the  famous  traveller,  was  born  in  Connecticur, 
and  was  serving  as  a  corporal  of  marines  on  board  the  Resolution, 
one  of  Capt.  James  Cook's  ships  in  his  last  famous  exploring  voyage 
(177G-1780)  and  from  his  letters  the  news  of  the  immense  profits  to 
be  made  in  the  fur  trade  of  the  N.  W.  Coast  of  America  soon  spread 
among  the  adventurous  merchants  and  fearless  seamen  of  New  Eng- 
land, and  the  result  is  thus  told  by  Geo.  Bancroft,  in  the  "Reply  of 
the  T^nited  States  to  the  case  of  the  Govt,  of  Her  Britannic 
Majesty,"  in  the  San  Juan  Island  Arbitration :  "The  British  case 
exaggerates  the  importance  of  the  voyage  of  Captain  Vancouver. 
So  far  were  American  fur-traders  from  following  his  guidance,  they 
were  his  forerunners  and  teachers.  Their  early  voyages  are  among 
the  most  marvelous  events  in  the  history  of  commerce.  So  soon  as 
the  Independence  of  the  United  States  was  acknowledged  by  Great 
Britain  the  strict  enforcement  of  the  old  unrepealed  navigation  laws 
cut  them  off  from  their  former  haunts  of  commerce,  and  it  became  a 
question  from  what  ports  American  ships  could  bring  home  coffee, 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  35 

and  sugar,  and  spices,  and  tea.  All  British  colonies  were  barred 
against  them  as  much  as  were  those  of  Spain.  So  American  ships 
sailed  into  eastern  oceans,  where  trade  with  the  natives  was  free. 
The  great  Asiatic  commerce  poured  wealth  into  the  lap  of  the  new 
republic,  and  Americans  observing  the  fondness  of  the  Chinese  for 
furs,  sailed  fearlessly  from  the  Chinese  seas,  or  round  Cape  Horn 
to  the  northwest  coast  of  America,  in  quest  of  peltry  to  exchange 
for  the  costly  fabrics  and  products  of  China.  They  were  in  the 
waters  of  northwest  America  long  before  the  Hudson's  Bay  Com- 
pany. We  know,  alike  from  British  and  from  Spanish  authorities, 
that  an  American  sloop,  fitted  out  at  Boston  in  New  England,  and 
commanded  by  Captain  Kendrick,  passed  through  the  straits  of 
Fuca  just  at  the  time  when  the  American  Constitution  went  into 
operation — two  years  before  Vancouver,  and  even  before  Quimper 
and  de  Haro.  Americans  did  not  confine  themselves  to  one  passage 
in  preference  to  others,  but  entered  every  channel,  and  inlet,  and 
harbor,  where  there  was  a  chance  of  trafficking  with  a  red  Indian 
for  skins ;  and  they  handed  down  from  one  to  another  the  results  of 
their  discoveries. 

''The  instruction  from  the  British  Admiralty  to  Captain  Van- 
couver was  prompted  by  an  account,  which  they  had  seen,  of  the 
voyage  of  Kendrick,  and  the  belief,  derived  from  that  account,  that 
the  waters  of  the  Pacific  might  reach  far  into  the  American  con- 
tinent."    (Cf.  Berlin  Arbitration,  pp.  124-125.) 

Among  the  American  captains  in  the  N.  W.  trade  was  Kobert 
Gray,  Master  of  the  good  ship  Columbia,  from  Boston,  who,  sailing 
from  Nootka  Sound,  for  Canton,  in  1789,  sold  his  furs,  took  in  a 
cargo  of  tea,  and  August  10,  1790,  entered  Boston  Harbor,  having 
the  honor  of  first  carrying  the  stars  and  stripes  around  the  world. 

He  immediately  returned  to  the  N.  W.  Coast,  and  remained 
exploring  and  trading  with  the  natives  till  the  spring  of  1792. 

In  April,  1792,  the  famous  British  explorer,  Capt.  Geo.  Van- 
couver, reached  the  California  coast,  and  sailed  slowly  northward, 
examining  closely — as  he  himself  says — "under  the  most  favorable 
conditions  of  wind  and  weather,"  the  whole  coast  and  especially  the 
Deception  Bay  of  Meares,  and  April  29th,  entered  in  his  journal 
that  ''The  several  large  rivers,  and  capacious  bays  and  inlets,  that 
have  been  described  as  discharging  their  waters  into  the  Pacific, 
between  the  40th  and  48th  parallels  were  reduced  to  brooks,  insuf- 
ficient for  our  vessels  to  navigate,  or  to  bays  inaccessible  as  harbors 
for  refitting." 

The  very  day  that  Vancouver  thus  recorded  his  conviction  that 
there  was  no  great  river  at  Deception  Bay,  he  spoke  the  Columbia, 
and  was  informed  by  Captain  Gray  that  he  had  been  off  the  mouth 
of    a    great    river,    in    Lat.    46°,    10',    where    the    outset    was    so 


30  ACQUmiTIOX    OF    OREGON 

stronj;:  as  to  bailie  all  liis  atteiii])ts  at  enti-ance  for  nine  days,  where- 
upon, Vancouver,  with  Ihat  lordly  contenii)t  for  an  American  cap- 
tain, then  felt  by  all  His  Britannic  Majesty's  naval  oflBcers,  added 
to  his  entry  of  Captain  CHray's  information,  in  his  journal,  that 
''This  was  probably  the  o})ening  passed  by  us  on  the  forenoon  of  the 
27th,  and  was  apparently  inaccessible  nor  from  the  current,  but 
from  the  breakers  that  extend  across  it." 

Eminent  explorer  and  great  navigator  as  Captain  Vancouver 
of  Tlis  Majesty's  service  was,  he  was  vastly  mistaken  for  once,  as 
the  Down  East  merchant  captain  proved  by  immediately  sailing 
away  to  Meares'  Deception  Bay,  and,  on  May  11,  1792 — a  date  ever 
memorable  in  Oregon  history — he  sailed  boldly  through  the  break- 
ers which  the  IJi'itish  naval  oflicers  had  agreed  were  impassable,  and 
into  the  mouth  of  the  ''Great  Kiver  of  the  West,"  long  sought  for, 
and  which  Meares  and  Vancouver  both  declared  did  not  exist,  and 
thus  gave  us  a  claim  by  priority  of  discovery  to  the  vast  territory 
it  drained. 

Anchoring  ten  miles  up  the  stream,  he  remained  three  days,  trad- 
ing and  filling  his  casks  there  with  fresh  water  from  its  vast  flood, 
and  then  sailed  twelve  or  fifteen  miles  farther  up  the  stream,  when 
finding  that  he  had  taken  the  wrong  channel,  he  anchored  again, 
and  on  the  20tli  sailed  out  and  to  the  North,  where,  fortunately  for 
his  fame  as  the  discoverer  of  the  most  important  river  of  the  Pacific 
coast,  he  gave  Quadra,  the  Spanish  commandant  at  Nootka  the  par- 
ticulars of  his  discovery,  and  charts  of  the  mouth  of  the  river. 

That  Captain  Gray  was  a  man  of  energy,  and  enterprise,  and 
dauntless  courage  is  plain  from  his  whole  career,  and  from  nothing 
more  so  than  from  his  passage  of  that  fearful  bar,  which  has  swal- 
lowed so  many  lives  in  its  foaming  breakers  and  is  even  now  dreaded 
by  many  experienced  seamen. 

That  he  was  modest  is  evident  from  his  not  attem])ting  to  affix 
his  own  name  to  the  Great  Kiver.  That  he  was  patriotic,  as  became 
the  ca})tain  whose  good  fortune  it  had  been  to  first  carry  his 
countrj's  flag  around  the  world,  appears  from  the  name  he  did  give 
it,  and  he  would  seem  to  have  been  gifted  with  something  of  pro- 
phetic vision,  for  he  entered  the  name  in  his  log-book,  not  as  we  now 
have  it,  the  Columbia  Kiver,  but  with  the  apostrophe  and  s  of  the 
possessive — Columbia's  River — as  if  giving  notice  to  all  the  world 
that  his  country  would  ever  maintain  its  claim  by  right  of  discovery, 
which  his  enterprise  and  valor  had  given  it  to  the  vast  region  which 
it  drains.  Gray's  log-book  (covering  May  7-21,  1792)  was  first 
j>rinted  in  full  by  Congress  in  Baylies'  Supi)lemental  Kept.  (No. 
213,  H.  of  R.,  19  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  May  26,  1820)  ;  also  in  Tann's  Rept. 
(No.  470,  Vol.  5,  Sen.  Docs.,  25  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  June  6, 1838)  accom- 
panied by  the  deposition  of  Chas.  Bulfinch;  also  in  Cushing's  Rept. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  37 

of  which  10,000  extra  copies  were  ordered  printed  January  4,  and 
February  16,  1839  (Kept.  No.  101,  H.  of  R.,  25th  Cong.,  3d  Sess.)  ; 
also  in  the  Government  edition  of  Greenhow's  Oregon,  February  10, 
1840  (No.  174,  Vol.  4,  Sen.  Docs.,  26th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.)  of  which 
2500  copies  besides  the  usual  number  were  ordered.  It  was  printed 
in  full  in  Hunt's  Merchants'  Magazine  in  April,  1842,  and  the  article 
copied  in  full  into  Niles'  Register  for  May  21,  1842.  It  was  also 
printed  on  pp.  434-6  of  the  1845  edition  of  Greenhow's  "History  of 
Oregon  and  California." 

Nixon  (p.  17)  of  "How  Marcus  Whitman  Saved  Oregon"  and  p. 
90  of  his  "Whitman's  Ride  Tlirough  Savage  Lands,"  and  Mowry, 
("Marcus  Whitman,"  p.  1)  says  "Gray  took  posession  in  the  name 
of  the  United  States  of  America"  but  neither  gives  any  authority 
for  it  (and  Gray's  log-book  gives  no  intimation  of  any  such  proceed- 
ing, which  he  certainly  would  have  recorded  had  it  been  done).  The 
only  entry  in  his  log-book  about  any  one  from  the  ship  going  on 
shore  at  all  is  the  following :  "May  15.  In  the  afternoon  Captain 
Gray  and  Mr.  Hoskins,  in  the  jolly  boat,  went  on  shore  to  take  a 
short  view  of  the  country." 

Nothing  could  be  more  unlikely  than  that  Gray  would  attempt 
to  take  possession  of  the  country  in  the  name  of  the  United  States, 
for  the  United  States  reckoning  from  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence was  not  quite  16  years  old,  and  since  out  of  the  confederation 
of  jealous  and  mutually  distrustful  colonies  a  still  pretty  loosely 
^'United  States"  had  been  formed,  it  was  only  three  years  when 
Gray  discovered  and  named  "Columbia's  River." 

The  population  of  these  states  (which  were  still  so  weakly  bound 
together  that  no  one  yet  spelled  Nation  with  a  big  N.)  was  almost 
entirely  on  the  Atlantic  slope  of  the  Alleghanies  and  its  western 
boundary  was  the  Mississippi  river,  so  that,  between  the  headwaters 
of  the  Columbia  and  any  territory  owned  by  the  United  States, 
stretched  about  a  thousand  miles  owned  by  Spain,  a  region  wholly 
unknown,  except  that  all  geographical  principles  made  it  certain 
that  there  must  be  a  vast  mountain  system  there,  and  as  the  world 
then  looked  it  would  take  two  centuries  for  the  region  east  of  the 
Mississippi  to  become  thickly  populated. 

Not  till  after  the  Treaty  of  Ghent  had  provided  for  the  restitu- 
tion of  Astoria  to  the  United  States  did  the  U.  S.  Government  have 
so  much  as  a  copy  of  Gray's  log-book,  but  knowing  of  the  discovery 
through  "Vancouver's  Narrative"  and  from  newspaper  accounts,  in 
1816  President  Madison  applied  to  Samuel  Brown,  Esq.,  the  prin- 
cipal living  owner  of  the  sloops  Washington  and  Columbia  (which 
Capt.  Robt.  Gray  had  commanded),  for  correct  copies  of  all  proceed- 
ings relative  to  the  discovery  of  the  Columbia  that  should  be  found 
in  the  papers  left  by  Captain  Gray,  and  after  some  search  Mr.  Silas 

198123 


38  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

Atkins,  a  brotlier  of  the  widow  of  Gray,  found  the  log-book  of  the 
Columbia,  as  appears  by  a  deposition  of  Chas.  Bulfiuch  of  Boston, 
accompanying  the  copy  of  the  log  which  he  furnished  the  Govern- 
ment. (Cf.  p.  20,  Linn's  Kept,  being  No,  470,  Sen.  Docs.,  2nd  Sess., 
25th  Cong.,  Vol.  V.,  June  G,  1838.) 

Five  months  to  a  day  after  Gray  left  the  (Columbia,  Vancouver, 
having  obtained  copies  of  Gray's  chart  and  narrative  from  Quadra, 
the  Spanish  Comnumder  at  Nootka  Sound,  .sent  his  subordinate, 
Broughton,  into  the  river,  who,  anchoring  a  few  miles  from  the 
ocean,  rowed  80  miles  farther  up  the  stream,  and  then  had  the 
effrontery  ''To  take  possession  of  the  river  and  the  country  in  its 
vicinity  in  His  Britannic  Majesty's  name,  having  every  reason  to 
believe  that  the  subjects  of  no  other  civilized  nation  or  state  had 
ever  entered  this  river  before.  In  this  opinion  he  was  confirmed  by 
Gray's  sketch,  in  which  it  does  not  appear  that  Mr.  Gray  either  saw, 
or  was  within  five  leagues  of  its  entrance."  (Cf.  Vol.  1,  Chap.  XI., 
and  Vol.  2,  Chap.  III.,  of  "A  Voyage  of  Discovery  to  the  No.  Pacific 
Ocean  and  Bound  the  world,  etc.,  under  command  of  Capt.  George 
Vancouver,  London,  1798.") 

This  quibble,  devised  to  rob  Gray  of  the  honor  and  his  country 
of  the  benefit  of  his  daring  deed,  without  which  it  is  plain  that  Van- 
couver would  never  have  thought  of  trying  to  enter  the  stream, 
which  he  had  declared  to  be  ''only  a  mere  brook,  or  at  most  a  stream 
too  small  for  navigation,"  must  ever  remain  a  stain  on  the  fame  of 
Vancouver,  and  was  based  on  the  very  ingenious  and  before  un- 
heard of  device  of  claiming  that  the  river  began  25  miles  up  the 
stream,  where  it  narrows  to  the  width  of  a  thousand  yards,  and  that 
Gray  had  only  entered  a  bay  at  its  mouth,  and  this  though  Gray's 
log-book  states  that  he  filled  his  casks  with  fresh  water  at  his  first 
anchorage  only  10  miles  inside  the  bar. 


CHAPTER    III. 

THE   LOUISIANA   PURCHASE.      THE   LEWIS    AND    CLARK 
EXPEDITION  IN  1803-6. 

After  escaping  in  1782  from  a  British  frigate  on  which  he  was 
compelled  to  serve  against  his  native  land,  John  Ledyard  interested 
the  famous  Robt.  Morris  in  a  project  to  trade  on  the  N.  W,  Coast, 
but  the  ruin  of  Morris'  fortunes  spoiled  the  plan,  and  in  February, 
1786,  Ledyard  was  in  Paris,  trying  to  interest  French  capital  in  the 
North  West  Coast  fur  trade,  but  failing  to  succeed,  his  adventurous 
spirit  led  him  to  accept  a  proposition  made  him  by  Thos.  Jefferson, 
then  our  minister  at  Paris,  which  is  stated  in  Jefferson's  own  words 
as  follows :  ''I  then  proposed  to  him  to  go  by  land  to  Kamtchatka, 
cross  in  some  of  the  Russian  vessels  to  Nootka  Sd.,  fall  down  into 
the  latitude  of  the  Mo.,  and  penerate  to  and  through  the  "U.  S." 
(Coues'  Ed.  of  Lewis  and  Clark,  Intro,  pp.  XVIIL  and  XIX.  See 
also  Biography  of  Ledyard  by  Jared  Sparks,  pp.  233  372.  Also 
Greenhow,  1845  Ed.  pp.  162-63).  Jefferson,  through  the  famous 
Baron  de  Grimm,  obtained  the  consent  of  the  Empress  Catharine 
of  Russia  and  Ledyard  had  proceeded  as  far  as  Irkutsk,  in  Siberia, 
where,  on  the  night  of  the  28th  of  February,  1788,  he  was  arrested 
by  order  of  the  Empress  (probably  at  the  instigation  of  the  Russian 
American  Co.,  who  wished  to  keep  all  the  details  of  their  opera- 
tions secret),  and  conveyed  night  and  day  in  a  closed  carriage  to  the 
border  of  Poland,  and  there  released  with  strict  orders  not  to  again 
set  foot  on  Russian  territory. 

In  1792,  Jefferson  (then  Secretary  of  State)  arranged  with  Cap- 
tain Merriwether  Lewis  to  attempt  to  cross  the  continent,  with 
Michaux  the  famous  French  botanist  as  his  only  companion,  and 
they  had  proceeded  as  far  as  Kentucky,  when  Michaux  was  unex- 
pectedly recalled  by  the  French  government,  and  so  the  trans-con- 
tinental trip  was  abandoned  (Cf.  Coues'  Lewis  and  Clark,  Vol.  1, 
Intro,  pp.  XIX.-XX.)  October  1,  1800,  Spain  by  a  secret  treaty 
(never  published  in  full  till  1820)  ceded  to  France  "The  colony  or 
province  of  Louisiana,  with  the  same  extent  which  it  now  has  in  the 
hands  of  Spain,  and  which  it  had  w^hen  France  possessed  it,  and 
such  as  it  should  be  according  to  the  treaties  subsequently  to  be 
made  between  Spain  and  other  States." 


40  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

The  same  year  Thos.  Jefferson,  whose  great  mind  had  for  years 
appreciated  the  value  of  the  Louisiana  Ty.,  and  the  absolute  neces- 
sity of  at  least  the  Isle  of  Orleans  (on  which  New  Orleans  is  sit- 
uated), with  its  control  of  the  ]\[ississi])i)i  River,  to  the  prosperity 
of  the  rapidly  growing  States  beyond  the  Alleghanies,  was  first 
elected  President. 

In  unexpected  emergencies,  the  mere  politician,  thinking  only 
and  always  of  self,  asks  "What  must  I  do  to  be  consistent  with  my 
own  record,  and  my  party  platform?"  But  the  statesman,  knowing 
that  new  conditions  often  impose  new  duties,  and  so  the  consistent 
pursuit  of  his  country's  advantage  will  frequently  require  him  to 
do  things  inconsistent  with  his  own  past  opinions,  as  well  as  with  his 
party's  platform,  asks  only,  ''What  action  will  best  promote  my 
country's  welfare?"  Fortunately  for  our  national  welfare  Thos. 
Jefferson  was  one  of  the  ablest,  most  unselfish,  and  most  patriotic 
of  statesmen. 

He  had  been  elected  after  an  exceedingly  acrimonious  contest,  as 
the  champion  of  "the  strict  construction  of  the  constitution,"  and 
the  most  ingenious  sophistry  could  not  find  in  a  strict  construction 
of  that  instrument  any  authority  for  the  President  to  purchase  new 
territory;  but  the  good  of  his  country  demanded  it,  and  so  among 
the  early  acts  of  his  administration  he  instructed  the  venerable 
Chancellor  Livingston,  our  minister  to  France,  to  try  to  buy  at  least 
the  Isle  of  Orleans,  and,  if  })ossible,  all  of  Louisiana. 

But  Napoleon,  bent  on  founding  a  great  French  military  colony 
in  Louisiana,  and  so  repairing  the  disaster  of  Montcalm's  defeat 
and  the  fall  of  Quebec,  would  listen  to  no  proposition  to  sell,  till  in 
the  spring  of  1808,  it  became  plain  that  the  famous  peace  of  Amiens 
would  barely  live  out  its  first  brief  year. 

Meanwhile  Jefferson — determined  to  carry  out  his  pet  project  of 
a  trans-conliiienlal  ex])loration — on  January  IS,  1803,  sent  to  Con- 
gress a  confidential  message  recommending  such  an  expedition, 
which  resulted  in  an  appropriation  of  |2,500.00,  and  the  selection 
again  of  Captain  ^lerriwether  Lewis,  who  had  been  private  secre- 
tary to  Jefferson,  to  command  the  party  in  association  with  Captain 
William  Clark,  a  younger  brother  of  General  George  Rogers  Clark, 
the  conqueror  of  the  N.  W.  Territory  in  the  Revolutionary  War,  each 
commander  having  equal  authority. 

This  message  of  President  Jefferson  was  on  request  of  the  House 
of  Representatives  again  transmitted  by  President  J.  Q.  Adams, 
December  27,  1825,  and  they  voted  to  continue  to  treat  it  as  confi- 
dential. (Cf.  Cong.  Debates,  19th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  182o-G,  Vol.  2, 
Part  1,  p.  002.)  It  is  not  printed  in  Jefferson's  Works,  and  was 
never  published  till  1810,  when  it  appeared  in  the  2d  edition  of  ''The 
Addresses  and  Messages  of  the  Presidents  of  the  United  States,  In- 


ACQUISITION   OF    OREGON  41 

augural,  Annual  and  Special,  1789  to  1846,  2  vols.,  8vo.,  New  York, 
Edw.  Walker,  1846,  Appendix,  pp.  XXV.-XXVII.,  entitled  "Jeffer- 
son's Confidential  Message  recommending  a  Western  Exploring  Ex- 
pedition." 

It  is  now  easily  accessible,  being  printed  on  pp.  852-354  of  ''Mes- 
sages and  Papers  of  the  Presidents  1789-1897,  Vol.  1,  1789-1817. 
Eichardson."  As  France  then  owned  Louisiana,  and  Spain  claimed 
the  whole  Pacific  Coast  as  far  north  as  Prince  William's  Sound  in 
Lat.  61°  No.  it  was  needful  to  avoid  exciting  their  antagonism. 

The  message  began  as  follows : 

"Gentlemen  of  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives : 

"As  the  continuance  of  the  Act  for  establishing  trading  houses 
with  the  Indian  tribes  will  be  under  the  consideration  of  the  Legis- 
lature at  its  present  session,  I  think  it  my  duty  to  communicate  the 
views  which  have  guided  me  in  the  execution  of  that  Act,  in  order 
that  you  may  decide  on  the  policy  of  continuing  it  in  the  present  or 
any  other  form,  or  discontinuing  it  altogether  if  that  shall  on  the 
whole  seem  most  for  the  public  good."  Then  for  something  more 
than  a  page  he  states  his  view  of  the  proper  mode  of  conducting 
Indian  affairs  so  as  to  lead  the  Indians  to  abandon  hunting  and 
fishing,  for  stock  raising  and  farming,  and  then  adroitly  introduces 
the  subject  of  an  exploring  tour  across  the  continent,  on  the  plea  of 
the  necessity  of  a  better  knowledge  of  the  Indians  along  the  Mis- 
souri River,  and  the  great  advantages  which  would  accrue  from  the 
fur  trade  being  diverted  from  the  Canadian  route  to  some  of  the 
numerous  channels  which  our  great  river  systems  offer,  mentioning 
so  many  of  them  as  to  attract  support  for  the  measure  from  all  the 
Atlantic  seaboard  south  of  New  England  as  follows :  "The  river 
Missouri  and  the  Indians  inhabiting  it  are  not  as  well  known  as  is 
rendered  desirable  by  their  connection  with  the  Mississippi,  and 
consequently  with  us. 

"It  is,  however,  understood  that  the  country  on  that  river  is 
inhabited  by  numerous  tribes,  who  furnish  great  supplies  of  furs 
and  peltry  to  the  trade  of  another  nation,  carried  on  in  a  high  lati- 
tude through  an  infinite  number  of  portages  and  lakes,  shut  up  by 
ice  through  a  long  season. 

"The  commerce  on  that  line  could  bear  no  competition  with  that 
of  the  Missouri,  traversing  a  moderate  climate,  offering,  according 
to  the  best  accounts,  a  continued  navigation  from  its  source,  and 
possibly  a  single  portage  from  the  Western  Ocean,  and  finding  to 
the  Atlantic  a  choice  of  channels  through  the  Illinois  or  Wabash, 
the  Lakes,  and  Hudson,  through  the  Ohio  and  Susquehanna  or 
Potomac,  or  James  Rivers,  and  through  the  Tennessee  and  Savan- 
nah Rivers. 


42  ACQUISITION    OF   OREGON 

"An  iutelligent  officer  with  10  or  12  chosen  men  fit  for  the  enter- 
prise and  willing  to  undertake  it,  taken  from  our  posts  where  they 
may  be  spared  without  inconvenience,  might  explore  the  whole  line, 
even  to  the  Western  Ocean,  have  conferences  with  the  natives  on  the 
subject  of  commercial  intercourse,  get  admission  among  them  for 
our  traders  as  others  are  admitted,  agree  on  convenient  deposits  for 
an  interchange  of  articles,  and  return  with  the  information  acquired 
in  the  course  of  two  summers. 

"Their  arms  and  accoutrements,  some  instruments  of  observa- 
tion, and  light  and  cheap  presents  for  the  Indians  would  be  ail  the 
apparatus  they  would  carry,  and  with  the  expectation  of  a  soldier's 
portion  of  land  on  their  return  would  constitute  the  whole  expense. 

"Their  pay  would  be  going  on  whether  here  or  there. 

"While  other  civilized  nations  have  encountered  great  expense  to 
enlarge  the  boundaries  of  knowledge  by  undertaking  voyages  of  dis- 
covery, and  for  other  literary  purposes  in  various  parts  and  direc- 
tions, our  nation  seems  to  owe  to  the  same  object,  as  well  as  to  its 
own  interests,  to  explore  this  the  only  line  of  easy  communication 
across  the  continent,  and  so  directly  traversing  our  own  part  of  it. 

"The  interests  of  commerce  place  the  principal  object  within  the 
constitutional  powers  and  care  of  Congress,  and  that  it  should 
incidentally  advance  the  geographical  knowledge  of  our  own  con- 
tinent cannot  but  be  an  additional  gratification. 

"The  nation  claiming  the  territory,  regarding  this  as  a  literary 
pursuit  which  it  is  in  the  habit  of  permitting  within  its  dominions, 
would  not  be  disposed  to  view  it  with  jealousy,  even  if  the  expiring 
state  of  its  interest  there  did  not  render  it  a  matter  of  indifference. 

"The  appropriation  of  |2,500  for  the  purpose  of  extending  the 
external  commerce  of  the  Ignited  States,  while  understood  by  the 
executive  as  giving  the  legislative  sanction,  would  cover  the  under- 
taking from  notice,  and  prevent  the  obstructions  which  interested 
individuals  might  otherwise  previously  put  in  its  way." 

Thus  (while  it  was  uncertain  whether  or  not  we  could  buy  any 
part  of  Louisiana)  originated  that  famous  Lewis  and  Clark's  expe- 
dition, which  Coues  fittingly  characterizes  as  "Our  great  National 
epic  of  exploration." 

W^hile  the  plans  for  the  trans-continental  exploring  expedition 
were  thus  tnking  shai)e,  the  negotiations  relating  to  the  Louisiana 
Purchase  went  on,  and  Mr.  Monroe,  sent  on  a  special  mission  by 
Jefferson  with  written  authority  to  pay  |2,000,000  for  the  little 
Isle  of  Orleans,  and  ample  verbal  instructions  for  the  possible 
chance  to  purchase  all  of  Louisiana,  joined  Livingston,  in  Paris, 
April  12,  1803,  and,  to  his  delighted  astonishment  learned  that 
Napoleon,  who  had  so  long  refused  all  offers  for  a  little  island,  had 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  43 

the  day  before  thrown  an  empire  at  Livingston's  feet  by  offering  the 
whole  of  Louisiana,  comprising  not  only  the  present  State  of 
Louisiana,  but  also  all  of  Arkansas,  Missouri,  Iowa,  Nebraska,  North 
and  South  Dakota,  and  Indian  Territory  and  most  of  Kansas,  Okla- 
homa, Montana,  IMinnesota  and  Wyoming,  and  part  of  Colorado,  an 
area  larger  than  the  United  States  then  possessed,  and  about  four 
times  the  size  of  France,  because  he  knew  that  when  the  then  rapidly 
approaching  war  should  begin,  his  hated  enemy — Great  Britain — 
would  seize  it  if  owned  by  France. 

Negotiations  progressed  rapidly,  and  April  30,  1803,  the  whole  of 
Louisiana  (with  the  same  provisions  as  to  boundaries  heretofore 
cited  from  the  treaty  of  1800  ceding  it  to  France  (Cf.  p.  39,  ante), 
was  ceded  to  the  United  States  for  |1 5,000,000,  or  about  two  cents 
an  acre.     (Cf.  Greenhow,  p.  279,  J.  Q.  Adams'  Life  of  Monroe,  pp. 

255-6,  Randall's  Life  of  Jefferson,  pp.  ,  and  Am.  State  Papers, 

Foreign  Relations,  Vol.  II.,  pp.  506-583.) 

Though  owned  by  France  since  1800,  the  Spaniards  still  re- 
mained in  possession  of  Louisiana,  when  the  treaty  was  made  ceding 
it  to  the  United  States,  and  protested  against  its  transfer  to  the 
United  States;  and  not  till  November  30,  1803,  did  the  Spanish 
Commissioners  at  New  Orleans  deliver  possession  of  the  Province 
of  Louisiana  to  the  French  Commissioners,  and  three  weeks  later, 
on  December  20,  1803,  the  French  Commissioners  formally  trans- 
ferred it  to  our  Commissioners,  Governor  Claiborne  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi Territory  and  General  Wilkinson.  (Cf.  Jefferson's  Message  to 
Cong.,  dated  January  16,  1804,  in  Messages  and  Papers  of  the  Presi- 
dents. 1789-1817.  Vol.  1,  1789-1817,  Richardson,  p.  367;  also  p. 
581,  Vol.  II.,  Am.  State  Papers,  For.  Rel.) 

History  records  no  other  real  estate  transaction  approaching  this 
in  magnitude  and  in  the  importance  of  its  results,  and  yet  there 
were  not  wanting  many  truly  patriotic,  albeit  in  this  narrow  minded 
men,  who  bitterly  opposed  its  consummation,  and  zealously  labored 
to  prevent  the  ratification  of  the  treaty — so  true  is  it  that  parti- 
sanship often  blinds  the  judgment  even  of  able  and  honest  men,  and 
the  supposed  necessities  of  party  make  even  true  patriots  sometimes 
opposed  to  measures,  that  their  sons  and  grandsons,  with  fuller 
knowledge,  applaud. 

Not  always  are  the  men  knaves  who  stone  the  prophets,  nor  their 
sons  hypocrites  when  they  build  sepulchers,  alike  to  the  prophets 
whose  mission  their  fathers  failed  to  comprehend,  and  to  their 
fathers  also,  not  because  they  stoned  the  prophets,  but,  in  spite  of 
that  mistake  for  their  many  other  sterling  qualities  of  head  and 
heart. 

Thus,  as  in  1790,  the  early  stages  of  the  French  Revolution  com- 
pelled England  to  abate  her  unjust  demands  on  Spain  to  fix  her 


44  ACQUI8ITI0X    OF    OREGOX 

northern  boundary  line  at  40°  N.  Lat.,  to  our  serious  injury,  so  in 
1803,  the  progress  of  that  mighty  struggle,  unexpectedly  and  with- 
out bloodshed,  more  than  doubled  our  National  domain. 

In  both  cases  the  results  apjiear  to  have  been  the  best  for  human- 
ity which  could  have  happened,  and  it  is  such  events,  which  compel 
all  reverent  souls  as  they  read  history  to  believe  in  a  Divine  Provi- 
dence ruling  in  human  affairs  and  make  them  join  devoutly  in  the 
Psalmist's  declaration,  that  "He  maketh  the  wrath  of  man  to  praise 
Him." 

A  few  days  after  the  original  instructions  for  the  trans-con- 
tinental tour  in  President  Jefferson's  own  hand  writing  had  been 
received  by  Captain  Lewis,  news  of  the  signing  of  the  treaty  for  the 
cession  of  Louisiana  reached  our  Government.  This  necessitated 
some  changes  in  the  instructions,  and  though  a  start  was  made  for 
the  West  in  the  Autumn  of  1803,  with  the  hope  of  going  some  dist- 
ance up  the  Missouri  before  the  winter  should  begin,  the  unexpected 
delay  in  the  transfer  of  the  territory  prevented  it."  (Cf.  Ch.  I., 
"Lewis  and  Clark  Expedition.") 

At  length,  on  May  14,  1804,  the  party,  in  all  forty-four  persons 
in  three  boats,  entered  the  mouth  of  the  IMissouri  Kiver. 

The  steamboat  was  then  just  taking  shape  in  Fulton's  brain,  and 
they  were  forced  to  struggle  against  the  swift  current  of  the  muddy 
stream  as  best  they  could,  with  sails  and  oars. 

October  20,  1804,  they  had  worked  their  toilsome  way  1,600  miles 
up  to  the  Mandan  Indian  villages,  at  "the  great  bend"  of  the  Mis- 
souri. They  had  not  merely  to  explore  the  country,  and  observe  its 
geography,  but  also  to  obtain  all  possible  information  about  the 
Indian  tribes  dwelling  on  it,  and  to  notify  them  of  the  change  in  the 
ownership  of  the  country,  and  of  the  good  intentions  of  the  new 
"Great  Father"  at  Washington,  and  his  purpose  to  establish  trading 
posts  among  them. 

They  held  councils  with  various  tribes,  and  many  a  chief  there- 
after strutted  proudly  about  his  village,  full  dressed  in  an  uncom-. 
fortable  cocked  hat  and  feather,  and  an  ill-fitting  coat  gaudy  with 
gold  lace  and  scarlet  embroidery  and  with  a  pewter  medal  proudly 
displayed  on  his  naked  breast,  while  his  favorite  squaw  was  made 
passing  rich  by  the  gift  of  an  awl,  a  little  mirror  in  a  pewter  frame, 
some  needles,  a  few  yards  of  brass  wire  for  bracelets,  ear-rings,  and 
pendants  to  her  jet-black  locks,  or  by  some  strands  of  cheap  beads — 
more  precious  to  her  than  pearls  or  diamonds — or  perhaps  best  of 
all,  a  little  vermillion  to  heighten  the  color  of  her  coppery  cheeks 
and  forehead. 

In  the  Aricaras  they  found  one  of  the  very  few  tribes  of  savages 
wise  and  abstemious  enough  to  despise  strong  drink,  which  they 
refused  with  the  sensible  remark,  "That  they  were  surprised  that 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  45 

their  great  father  should  present  them  with  a  liquor  which  would 
make  them  fools."     (^'Lewis  and  Clark,"  1842  Ed.,  p.  111.) 

Though  thus  singular  in  the  matter  of  drink,  they  were  thorough 
Indians  on  the  title  to  horseflesh,  for,  a  few  years  after,  when,  in  a 
council  about  selling  horses  to  the  Astoria  party,  one  chief  doubted 
if  they  could  spare  enough,  another  chief  promptly  rebuked  him, 
declaring  that  there  need  be  no  trouble  about  it,  for,  if  they  had  not 
enough,  they  could  easily  steal  a  plenty.     ("Astoria,"  Chap.  XX.) 

Building  a  stockade  near  the  Mandan  villages  they  wintered 
there,  and  their  narrative  furnishes  many  interesting  glimpses  of 
Indian  life,  of  which  none  is  more  thoroughly  characteristic  than 
that  Pocapsahe,  one  of  the  principal  Mandans,  visited  them  New 
Year's  day,  and  brought  them  some  meat,  not  on  his  own  lordly 
shoulders,  but  on — (what  doubtless  seemed  to  him  the  most  natural 
and  proper  beast  of  burden  in  the  world) — his  wife's  back.  ("Lewis 
and  Clark,"  1842  Ed.,  Ch.  VI.,  p.  151.) 

April  6,  1805,  sending  a  detachment  back  with  reports,  etc.,  the 
balance  continued  up  the — from  there — unknown  river,  and  June 
13th — first  of  white  men — they  beheld  the  grandeur  of  the  Great 
Falls  of  the  Missouri. 

July  19,  they  passed  through  the  sublime  defile  which  they  named 
The  Gate  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and,  six  days  later  reaching  the 
Three  Forks  of  the  Missouri,  and  naming  them  Gallatin,  Madison, 
and  Jefferson,  they  paddled  up  the  latter  (because  it  came  from  the 
West  instead  of  the  South,  like  the  other  two  streams),  till  it 
divided  into  three  forks,  of  which  they  followed  the  middle,  or 
Beaverhead,  till  it  would  no  longer  float  a  canoe. 

Now,  late  in  August  of  their  second  summer,  their  situation  was 
diflScult  if  not  desperate,  for  they  were  worn  down  with  incessant 
toil,  and  almost  constant  wading  in  the  oft-recurring  shallows  of 
the  cold,  swift  streams,  their  provisions  were  nearly  exhausted,  and 
game  had  become  scarce,  and  unless  they  should  soon  meet  a  band  of 
Indians  and  get  horses  to  transport  their  luggage  over  none  knew 
how  many  hundreds  of  miles  of  lofty  and  rugged  mountains,  to  the 
navigable  waters  of  the  Columbia,  they  must  fail  in  the  great  object 
of  all  their  toils  and  dangers. 

Reaching  the  source  of  the  stream,  "One  of  the  men  in  a  moment 
of  enthusiasm,  standing  with  one  foot  on  either  bank  of  the  little 
rivulet,  thanked  God  that  he  had  lived  to  bestride  the  mighty  Mis- 
souri," (L.  &  C,  Ch.  XIV.)  and  soon  crossing  the  summit  they  drank 
of  the  headwaters  of  the  Salmon  River  branch  of  the  Columbia,  and 
in  a  little  while  came  suddenly  on  three  Shoshone  squaws,  who, 
taking  the  bronzed  strangers  for  the  ever  dreaded  Blackfeet  Indians, 
expected  only  death  or  captivity;  but  Captain  Lewis  stripping  up 
his  sleeve  to  show  his  color,  and  saying  tab'ba  'bone,  which  is  Sho- 


46  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

shone  for  white  man,  soon  calmed  their  fears;  and  giving  them 
presents  and  painting  their  cheeks  a  brilliant  vermillion,  ''made 
their  hearts  very  good,"  and  they  soon  notified  the  tribe,  whereupon, 
hastening  to  meet  for  the  first  time  the  ''pale  faces,"  the  chiefs  first, 
and  then  the  whole  body  of  the  warriors  sainted  the  Captain  and 
his  men  with  utmost  cordiality  and  in  most  approved  style  of  Indian 
politeness,  by  each  putting  the  left  arm  over  the  stranger's  right 
shoulder,  clasping  the  back  and  applying  the  left  cheek  to  the  right 
cheek  of  his  white  brother,  vociferating  ''Ah-hi-e  ah-hi-e!"  "I  am 
much  pleased!    I  am  much  rejoiced."     (L.  &  C,  Ch.  XVI.) 

It  scarcely  needs  be  said  that  when  the  ceremony  ended  the  pale 
faces  had  received  no  small  share  of  the  paint  and  grease  with  which 
the  Indians  were  freely  besmeared. 

Nor  was  pathos  wholly  wanting,  for  Sacajawea,  the  interpreter's 
wife,  was  a  Shoshone,  taken  prisoner  years  before  by  the  Blackfeet, 
and  in  Canieahwait,  the  Shoshone  chief,  she  recognized  her  brother. 

Buying  horses  they  started  across  one  of  the  most  rugged  of  all 
the  Kocky  Mountain  regions,  and  suffering  much  hardship  from 
snow,  and  frost,  and  scarcity  of  food,  after  twenty-one  days  or 
nearly  four  hundred  miles  travel,  having  been  forced  to  kill  two 
colts  and  one  horse  for  food,  they  came  out  September  21st  among 
the  Nez  Perces  Indians,  about  six  hundred  miles  from  the  Pacific, 
on  a  stream  navigable  for  boats. 

Leaving  their  horses  with  the  Nez  Perces,  they  built  canoes,  and 
October  7, 1805,  started  down  the  river  for  ''the  great  stinking  pond," 
as  the  Indians  of  the  mountains  called  the  ocean,  and  on  November 
7th  their  journal  says:  "The  fog  suddenly  clearing  away  we  were 
at  last  presented  with  the  glorious  sight  of  the  ocean — that  ocean, 
the  object  of  all  our  labors,  the  reward  of  all  our  anxieties." 

No  holiday  pastime  had  this  month  been  of  boating  down  the 
unknown  Koos  Kooske,  the  Snake  and  the  Columbia,  for  they  have 
numerous  rapids  where  huge  rocks  divide  their  waters,  and  threaten 
the  daring  boatsmen  with  destruction. 

More  than  fifty  of  these  rapids  they  ran  with  imminent  hazard, 
but,  fortunately  with  no  more  serious  consequences  than  frequent 
wetting  of  cargoes  and  ducking  of  crews. 

Other  rapids  they  dared  not  run,  but  made  weary  portages,  car- 
rying boats  and  lading  on  their  shoulders  and  carefully  watching  to 
prevent  the  Indians  from  plundering. 

Provisions,  too,  were  scarce  and  high  priced,  for  westward  of 
the  Mandans  none  of  the  Northern  Indians  cultivated  the  soil,  and 
our  explorers  were  reduced  to  the  necessity  of  subsisting  very 
largely  on  dogs  bought  from  the  Indians,  and  as  the  tribes  on  the 
Columbia,  unlike  those  on  the  IMissouri,  never  ate  dogs,  the  dema- 
gogues among  them  soon  held  the  pale  faces  up  to  ridicule  and  con- 


ACQUISITION   OF    OREGON  47 

tempt  as  "dog  eaters,"  precisely  as  now,  white  demagogues  hold  the 
patient,  industrious  Chinaman  up  to  as  ill-deserved  reproach,  as 
eaters  of  cats  and  rats. 

As  the  Astoria  party — the  next  party  of  whites  that  passed 
down  the  Columbia — were  reduced  to  the  same  necessity  of  living 
on  dogs,  I  have  often  wondered  what  legends  would  have  been 
handed  down  among  these  tribes  if  it  had  chanced  that  no  more 
whites  had  visited  them  for  a  generation  or  two. 

How  the  "medicine  men"  would  have  sneered  whenever  the  pale 
faces  were  mentioned,  and  savagely  denounced  them  as  "Miserable, 
degraded  dog-eaters — men  who,  by  some  strange  freak  of  the  Great 
Spirit  had  been  given  skill  to  make  many  wonderful  and  useful 
things  but  whose  tastes  in  the  matter  of  food  were  sadly  debased." 

Nothing  speaks  more  eloquently  of  the  material  progress  of  the 
past  century,  than  the  comparison  of  this  first  journey  ever  made 
overland  to  the  Pacific  within  our  territory,  which  occupied  this 
well  equipped  and  admirably  managed  party  eighteen  months  of 
arduous  toil  from  St.  Louis,  with  much  hardship,  and  many  perils 
and  no  little  risk  of  starvation  on  the  way,  and  the  present  overland 
journey  made  from  St.  Louis  to  the  Pacific  by  any  one  of  a  half 
dozen  routes  in  three  days  in  the  luxurious  ease  of  a  palace  car. 

They  wintered  in  log  huts  on  the  south  of  the  mouth  of  the  Co- 
lumbia, and  March  23,  1806,  started  back,  and  when  they  reached 
the  Flathead  country,  turning  more  to  the  north  they  struck 
across  to  and  followed  up  the  great  northern  branch  of  the  Colum- 
bia, since  then  known  as  Clark's  Fork,  or  the  Flathead  River,  and 
about  where  Missoula,  Mont.,  now  stands  the  party  divided.  Cap- 
tain Lewis  taking  an  easterly  route,  and  crossing  the  main  range  of 
the  Rockies  on  to  the  Dearborn  River,  by  Lewis  and  Clark's  Pass 
(though  Captain  Clark  never  saw  it),  while  Captain  Clark,  taking 
a  more  southeasterly  course,  crossed  the  main  range  of  the  Rockies 
to  the  headwaters  of  the  Jefferson  River,  not  far  from  where  Dilkm, 
Mont.,  now  is,  over  a  pass  which  is  sometimes  called  Gibbon's,  but 
more  commonly  is  called — as  it  ought  ever  to  be — Clark's  Pass,  con- 
cerning which  their  narrative  says,  "They  had  now  crossed  from 
Traveller's  Rest  Creek  to  the  head  of  Jefferson's  River,  which  seems 
to  form  the  best  and  shortest  route  over  the  mountains  during  al- 
most the  whole  distance  of  164  miles.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  very  excellent 
road ;  and  by  cutting  down  a  few  trees  it  might  be  rendered  a  good 
route  for  wagons,  with  the  exception  of  about  four  miles  over  one  of 
the  mountains,  which  would  require  some  levelling."  (L.  &  C.  Ex. 
1842  Ed.,  p.  285.  Coues'  Ed.  Vol.  3,  p.  1128.)  Of  the  great  import- 
ance of  this  discovery  of  a  pass  so  easily  practicable  for  wagons  I 
shall  have  something  to  say  hereafter  in  discussing  the  story  of  ths 
development  of  a  wagon  road  across  the  continent. 


48  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

After  various  adventures  the  two  parties  were  reunited  near  the 
mouth  of  the  Yellowstone,  on  August  12,  180G,  and  September  23d, 
two  years,  four  months  and  nine  days  after  they  first  entered  the 
Missouri  Kiver,  they  ran  out  of  its  mouth,  and  in  the  language  of 
their  journal,  "Rounded  to  at  St.  Louis,  where  we  received  a  most 
hearty  and  hospitable  welcome  from  the  whole  village."  (L.  &  C. 
Ex.,  1842  Ed.,  Vol.  2,  p.  338.) 

This  expedition  added  priority  of  exploration  of  the  valley  of 
Columbia's  river,  to  discovery  of  its  mouth  in  our  chain  of  title, 
Great  Britain  being  too  late  in  reaching  its  sources,  as  she  had  been 
in  entering  its  mouth,  for  though  as  soon  as  they  heard  of  Lewis 
and  Clark's  expedition,  the  Northwest  Company  sent  a  party  to 
explore  it,  for  some  unknown  reason  they  never  went  beyond  the 
Mandan  villages.  (Greenhow,  p.  290,  Harmon's  Journal,  pp.  132 
and  137,  under  dates  of  Nov.  24,  1804,  and  Apr.  10,  1805.) 


CHAPTEE    IV. 

THE    FOUNDING    AND    CAPTURE    OF    ASTORIA. 

American  fur  trading  companies  having  their  headquarters  in 
St.  Louis  quickly  followed  up  the  route  of  Lewis  and  Clark  and  as 
early  as  the  autumn  of  1810,  Mr.  Andrew  Henry,  of  the  Missouri 
Fur  Company,  following  up  the  Madison  fork  of  the  Missouri,  had 
crossed  the  main  range  of  the  Rockies  on  to  that  beautiful  branch 
of  the  Snake  or  Lewis  River,  which  has  ever  since  been  known  as 
Henry  Fork,  and  established  a  trading  post  on  it,  which  was  the 
first  establishment  of  any  kind  made  by  American  people  in  the  ter- 
ritory drained  by  Columbia's  river.  The  enmity  of  the  savages  in 
its  vicinity,  and  the  difficulty  of  obtaining  provisions,  obliged  Mr. 
Plenry  to  abandon  the  post  in  the  spring  of  1811  (which  proved  very 
disastrous  to  the  overland  part  of  the  Astoria  party  in  the  autumn 
of  1811). 

Henry's  Lake  is  the  head  of  Henry  Fork,  and  is  a  most  lovely 
little  lakelet  covering  about  twelve  square  miles.  It  lies  in  a  horse- 
shoe-shaped bend  of  the  main  range  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and 
upon  its  shores,  within  a  semicircle  of  less  than  fifteen  miles  con- 
verge three  passes,  Reynolds,  Tahgee  and  Red  Rock,  each  so  gentle 
of  slope  that  wagons  could  be  driven  across  the  Continental  Divide 
into  the  Oregon  Territory,  over  any  one  of  them  with  only  a  few 
days'  labor  in  road  making,  and,  in  fact,  over  two  of  them,  Reynolds 
and  Tahgee — hundreds  of  wagons  went  before  even  a  survey  for  a 
road  was  made,  and  when  the  entire  amount  of  labor  expended  on 
the  two  passes  was  not  more  than  the  equivalent  of  the  labor  of  five 
men  for  a  week.  This  I  know  from  my  own  experience  in  driving 
over  them  in  1873  and  1875. 

So  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  learn  there  is  no  other  place  on 
earth  where  three  easy  passes  across  a  great  Continental  Divide  con- 
verge within  a  semicircle  of  fifteen  miles. 

Meanwhile  the  Astoria  party  was  organizing,  whose  story 
through  the  elegant  narrative  of  Irving,  and  the  less  known  and  less 
fascinating  but  very  valuable  books  of  Franchere,  of  Ross  Cox  and 
of  Alexander  Ross,  is  so  well  known  as  to  need  but  brief  mention. 

Admirably  planned  by  the  keen  intellect  of  John  Jacob  Astor, 
the  project,  which  would  finally  have  settled  the  title  of  the  Oregon 


50  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

Territory  by  addinji;  actual  occupancy  to  our  claims  by  discovery, 
and  exploration,  and  the  contiguity  of  territory  resultinjj;  from  the 
Louisiana  purchase  failed  throujj^h  the  war  of  1812,  and  the  treach- 
ery to  Mr.  Astor's  interests  of  those  partners  in  the  company  who 
were  British  subjects. 

The  overland  part  of  the  Astoria  Expedition  (numbering  sixty 
well-armed  men),  fearing  the  hostility  of  the  lilackfeet  Indians, 
struck  southwest  from  the  Missouri  Kiver  at  the  Arickara  village, 
crossed  the  Continental  Divide  south  of  what  is  now  the  Yellow- 
stone National  Park,  and,  guided  by  the  mighty  Tetons  (which  they 
named  the  IMlot  Knobs),  came  on  to  the  headwaters  of  the  Lewis  or 
Snake  Kiver,  where  they  made  the  sad  mistake  of  leaving  their 
horses,  and  trying  the  rest  of  the  journey  in  canoes,  but  finding  the 
stream  unnavigable  from  its  numerous  cataracts  and  ra7)ids,  they 
were  forced  in  winter  to  traverse  on  foot  the  (to  white  men)  wholly 
unknown,  dismal,  sand  deserts  and  dreary  lava  beds  of  the  ceniral 
[jart  of  the  Snake  River  valley,  where  the  Indians,  knowing  the 
whole  country  and  all  its  scanty  resources  were  barely  able  to  sub- 
sist. 

They  suffered  the  direct  extremes  of  hunger,  so  that  they  ate 
their  beaver  skins,  and  even  their  old  moccasins,  and  when,  at  some 
miserable  encam])ment  of  squalid  savages  they  obtained  a  few  dogs, 
or  a  horse,  they  could  not  wait  for  the  flesh  to  be  cooked,  but  ate  it 
half  or  wholly  raw. 

Two  perished  in  the  raging  torrent,  to  which  the  Canadian  voy- 
ageurs  gave  the  name  of  '^the  accursed  mad  river." 

Some  died  of  hunger  and  cold,  and  several  were  killed  by  In- 
dians. 

Thus  always  it  is  true  of  the  progress  of  humanity,  that  ''Other 
men  have  labored,"  aye  and  suffered  and  died  too,  "and  we  have  en- 
tered into  their  labors,"  and  of  no  part  of  our  country  is  it  truer 
than  of  the  Oregon  territory,  that  our  title  to  it  was  finally  estab- 
lished only  by  the  great  heroism,  patient  endurances,  and  in  not  a 
few  cases  the  life  blood  of  some  of  the  bravest,  truest  hearted  souls 
that  ever  lived. 

That  part  of  the  Astoria  party  (seven  in  number)  which  re- 
turned overland  discovered  in  November,  1812,  that  remarkable  gap 
in  the  main  range  of  the  Rockies  known  fis  the  South  Pass.  (See 
letter  of  Ramsay  Crooks  dated  New  York,  June  20,  18.50,  to  Anthony 
Dudgeon,  Esq.,  Detroit,  Mich.,  and  printed  in  Detroit  Free  Press  in 
1856.  I  have  the  clipping  from  the  Free  Press  containing  the  letter, 
but  not  the  precise  date  of  publication.  In  this  letter,  Crooks  says 
he  was  then  the  only  survivor  of  that  party  of  seven.) 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  51 

The  British  hoped  to  forestall  us  in  the  actual  occupation  of  the 
valley  of  Columbia's  river,  but  as  in  its  discovery  and  exploration, 
they  were  a  little  behind  hand. 

As  soon  as  they  learned  of  Mr.  Astor's  plans  the  Northwest  Com- 
pany (the  great  Canadian  fur  company  which  after  sixteen  years  of 
bitter  and  relentless  competition  with  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company 
was  consolidated  with  it  in  1821)  started  a  party  for  ''Columbia's 
River,"  but  though  they  did  succeed  in  crossing  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains onto  its  extreme  headwaters,  did  not  descend  it  till  a  few 
weeks  after  the  foundation  of  Astoria  on  April  12,  1811.  (Irving's 
"Astoria,"  Ch.  IX.;  Greenhow,  p.  296;  Franchere,  p.  101.)  (The 
Northwest  Company,  by  their  intrepid  explorer  David  Thompson, 
actually  occupied  the  extreme  headwaters  of  the  Columbia  in  1808, 
1809  and  1810.) 

On  October  16,  1813  (according  to  Irving,  but  October  23,  accord- 
ing to  Franchere),  all  the  interests  of  Mr.  Astor  in  the  Oregon  coun- 
try were  sold  by  his  managing  partner,  McDougal,  to  the  North- 
west Company  of  Montreal,  for  about  one-third  of  their  value, 
for  which  piece  of  treachery  to  his  partner's  interests  McDougal 
was  shortly  afterwards  rewarded  with  an  interest  in  the  Northwest 
Company.  (Cf.  Irving's  "Astoria,"  Chap.  59,  Franchere,  Chap. 
XV.)  November  30,  1813,  the  British  sloop-of-war  Raccoon  of 
twenty-six  guns  and  120  men,  arrived  off  Astoria,  its  oflScers  and 
crew  eagerly  anticipating  great  profits  for  themselves  in  the  prize 
money  they  should  receive  for  the  American  vessels  and  the  rich 
store  of  furs  they  expected  to  capture  there.  When  they  discovered 
that  there  were  no  American  ships  there,  and  that  their  expected 
fortunes  had  been  traded  away  from  their  grasp  only  six  weeks  be- 
fore by  the  shrewd  Scotch  agents  of  that  same  Northwest  Com- 
pany, one  of  whose  partners  had  not  only  instigated  their  being  de- 
spatched on  their  tedious  cruise  to  capture  Astoria  from  its  Yankee 
owners,  but,  with  five  voyageurs  for  the  service  of  his  company,  had 
been  taken  as  passengers  on  the  Raccoon,  their  disgust  and  disap- 
pointment were  inexpressible,  and  at  first  they  were  inclined  to  re- 
sent what  they  regarded  as  a  trick  put  u])on  them  by  their  bargain- 
ing countrymen,  and  demanded  that  the  property  should  be  in- 
ventoried that  measures  might  be  taken  to  recover  its  value  in  Eng- 
land, from  the  Northwest  Company.  A  few  days'  reflection,  how- 
ever, satisfied  Captain  Black,  Commander  of  the  Raccoon,  that 
he  might  better  make  the  best  of  the  situation  and  not  attempt  any 
legal  contest  with  the  sharp  traders  who  had  so  cunningly  jockeyed 
a  fortune  out  of  his  hands. 

Fortunately  for  us,  Captain  Black  was  not  content  "to  let  well 
enough  alone,"  and  sail  away  without  going  through  the  form  of 
having  captured  Astoria,  and  so,  on  December  12,  1813,  "Attended 


52  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

by  his  oflScers  he  entered  the  fort,  caused  the  British  standard  to  be 
erected,  broke  a  bottle  of  wine,  and  declared  in  a  loud  voice,  that  he 
took  possession  of  the  establishment  and  of  the  country,  in  the  name 
of  His  Britannic  Majesty,  changing  the  name  of  Astoria  to  that  of 
Ft.  George,"  and  soon  after  sailed  away.  (Irving's  "Astoria,"  Ch. 
60,  Chanchere,  Chap.  XV.) 

This  empty  ceremonial,  as  we  shall  soon  see,  forged  another 
strong  link  in  our  complex  chain  of  title  to  the  vast  region  "Where 
Rolls  the  Oregon." 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  TRUE  HISTORY  OF  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  A  ROUTE 

PRACTICABLE  FOR  AND  THE  DEVELOPMENT 

OF  THE  FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL 

WAGON  ROAD, 

The  myth-loving  originators  and  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Le- 
gend have  invented  so  many  amazing  and  amusing  fictions  about 
Whitman's  experience  with  his  "old  wagon"  that  a  vast  majority  of 
those  who  have  read  anything  about  him  regard  him  as  the  chief 
factor  in  discovering  and  developing  the  wagon  road  to  Oregon. 

It  is  doubtful  if  about  any  other  so  wholly  unimportant  and  in- 
consequential an  event  in  our  history  has  there  ever  been  imagined 
and  printed  as  true  so  many  palpably  false  statements,  as  about 
Whitman's  driving  his  "old  wagon"  to  Ft.  Boise  in  1836,  and  hence 
it  becomes  necessary  to  relate  briefly,  not  only  the  true  story  of  that 
event,  but  also  of  what  preceded  and  followed  it  in  the  discovery  of 
a  route  for  and  the  establishment  of  a  wagon  road  to  Oregon.  First 
let  us  glance  briefly  at  what  is  claimed  for  Whitman  in  this  mat- 
ter. In  the  chapters  on  the  varying  forms  of  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  Story,  and  on  what  Whitman  himself  claimed  (in  Part  II.), 
will  be  found  abundant  proof  of  the  extravagance  of  the  claims 
made  by  Atkinson  in  the  first  two  forms  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Ore- 
gon Story  in  1858  and  1859,  and  in  Whitman's  own  letters  from  No- 
vember 1,  1843,  to  October  18,  1847,  as  to  his  share  in  leading  the 
migration  of  1843  to  Oregon ;  but  neither  Atkinson  nor  Whitman 
claimed  that  his  wagon  in  1836  was  of  any  special  consequence,  and 
though  the  legend  had  as  early  as  1858-9  so  far  developed  as  to  ac- 
cuse the  H.  B.  Co.  of  opposing  later  wagons  going  beyond  Ft.  Hall, 
even  Atkinson  does  not  venture  to  accuse  the  H.  B.  Co.  of  opposing 
Whitman's  taking  his  wagon  in  1836,  while  not  a  sentence  has  been 
found  in  any  letter  or  diary  of  Whitman,  or  Mrs.  Whitman,  or  Mrs. 
Spalding,  or  in  any  letter  or  diary  of  Spalding,  or  Gray,  or  C.  Eells, 
or  Mrs.  Eells,  or  E.  Walker,  or  Mrs.  Walker  prior  to  the  publica- 
tion of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  in  1865-6,  that  accuses 
the  H.  B.  Co.  of  offering  any  opposition  to  wagons  going  beyond  Ft. 
Hall,  or  making  any  effort  to  prevent  Americans  from  reaching  and 
settling  in  Oregon.  And  though  in  his  articles  in  the  ''Pacific''  in 
September,  October  and  November,  1865,  in  launching  the  first  pub- 


54  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

lication  of  any  definite  and  detailed  form  of  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  Story,  Spalding  accused  the  H.  H.  Co.  of  stopping  wagons 
at  Ft.  Hall  to  prevent  the  settling  of  the  country  by  Americans  (Cf. 
^'Pacific/'  Nov.  9,  1865),  nowhere  in  any  of  those  articles,  nor  in 
his  pamphlet  published  in  1871  (as  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  37,  list  Cong.  3d 
Sess.),  with  all  its  wildly  extravagant  and  baseless  claims  for  Whit- 
man, and  its  equally  unfounded  denunciations  of  the  H,  B.  Co.  is 
there  one  sentence  about  any  op})ositiou  on  the  part  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.  to  Whitman's  driving  his  wagon  beyond  Ft.  Hall  in  1836, 

But  as  the  legend  developed,  and  it  became  evident  that  it  could 
not  obtain  credence  unless  the  belief  could  be  created  that  the  Hud- 
son Baj'  Co.  was  bitterly  opposed  to  Americans  reaching  and  set- 
tling in  Oregon,  the  myth-lovers  speedily  invented  statements  to 
that  effect,  and  that  this  opposition  began  when  Whitman  drove  his 
old  wagon  up  to  Ft.  Hall,  and  grew  more  intense  year  by  year  there- 
after. These  statements  having  been  often  repeated  and  apparently 
substantiated  by  fraudulent  quotations  (like  that  from  Palmer's 
Journal  hereinafter  examined),  and  by  other  fabricated  evidence 
have  come  to  be  generally  accepted  as  true,  though  there  exists  the 
most  indisj>utnble  contemporaneous  evidence  of  their  total  falsity. 

In  his  article  in  the  '■'Pacific'  for  September  28,  186.5,  Spalding 
wrote:  "The  only  one  purpose  of  these  consecrated  women"  (Mrs. 
Whitman  and  Mrs.  Spalding)  ''was  to  obey  their  Lord  and  carry 
the  Gospel  to  the  Indians.  God  had  also  another,  the  opening  the 
Great  AA'agon  Route  from  the  ^Missouri  to  the  Columbia  and  the 
gold  mines  of  the  Pacific.  They  actually  settled  the  question  by 
their  own  sacrifices  and  trials  and  dangers,  that  women,  and  wagons 
and  cattle  could  cross  the  mountains,  a  ihing  pronounced  impossible 
by  hundreds  of  mountain  men.  .  .  Therefore  to  these  two  Ameri- 
can missionary  heroines  are  the  people  of  the  United  States,  es- 
pecially the  citizens  of  this  coast,  indebted  more  than  to  any  other 
two  ])ersons  dead  or  alive,  for  the  present  and  ])rospective  imi)ort- 
ance  of  this  Great  West.  .  .  .  This  vastly  imjioi'tant  emigrant 
route,  thus  established  by  the  personal  sacrifices  and  hazards  of 
these  two  devoted  missionaries"  (Mrs.  Whitman  and  Mrs.  Spald- 
ing), "was  saved  to  our  country  as  it  was  about  to  be  extinguished  by 
the  false  representations  and  wiles  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  by  the 
personal  hazards  and  hardships  of  that  devoted  missionary.  Dr. 
Whitman,  in  the  California  Mountains  in  the  winter  of  1842  and 
'43."  Turn  noAV  to  W.  11.  Gray's  conlemporancous  letters  and  state- 
ments and  comi)are  them  with  what  he  wrote  and  ])ublished  in  1870 
in  his  "History  of  Oregon."  If  the  reader  will  turn  to  Chapter  3 
of  Part  II.,  infra,  he  will  find  Gray's  testimony  in  the  case  of 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  vs.  the  T^  S.,  in  which  he  admitted  not  only 
that  he  knew  that  Dr.  \\'hitman  reported  to  the  American  Board 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  55 

that  he  had  been  treated  by  the  officers  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  with 
the  utmost  and  unlimited  kindness  all  the  time  he  had  been  in  Ore- 
gon, but  that  "I  did  the  same  myself  when  I  was  at  home"  (i.  e.,  in 
the  winter  of  1837-38). 

January  10,  1838,  Gray  wrote  a  long  letter  from  Fairfield,  N.  Y., 
to  Rev.  D.  Greene,  Secretary  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  (from  which  noth- 
ing has  yet  been  published  as  far  as  I  know,  but),  from  which  the 
following  is  an  extract : 

"You  have  been  informed  as  to  the  very  kind  reception  and  treat- 
ment we  have  received  from  the  Officers  and  Gentlemen  connected 
with  the  Honorable  Hudson's  Bay  Company.  You  are  also  fully 
acquainted  with  their  object  in  the  country  and  you  also  know  ours. 
The  request  we  have  to  make  is  that  you  will  forward  to  the  Com- 
missioners of  the  Honorable  Hudson's  Bay  Company  in  London  a 
statement  of  instructions  that  you  may  forward  to  us,  requiring  us 
as  your  agents,  or  representatives,  or  servants,  to  have  nothing  to  do 
with  the  Trade  of  the  country,  so  far  as  it  relates  to  furs  of  any 
kind.  You  will  be  particular  and  explicit  on  this  point.  We  have 
thus  far  received  almost,  if  not  quite,  the  unbounded  confidence  of 
the  gentlemen  of  the  Company.  We  have  told  them  that  we  will 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  Fur  Trade  in  the  country.  It  is  not  our 
business  nor  do  we  mean  to  be  troubled  with  it.  W^e  wish  an  ex- 
pression of  the  Board  to  be  forwarded  to  the  Commissioners  in  Lon- 
don, and  also  to  Dr.  McLoughlin  at  Vancouver.  This  will  relieve 
them  from  any  apprehension  of  our  becoming  at  all  concerned  in 
the  Fur  Trade.  If  I  am  correctly  informed  as  to  our  Methodist 
friends  on  the  Columbia,  they  have  in  this  particular  excited  sus- 
picion, if  nothing  further,  as  to  their  object  in  coming  to  the  coun- 
try. The  Company  are  extremely  jealous  of  their  Trade,  and  as  we 
have  no  definite  instructions  from  the  Board  on  this  particular,  we 
wish  them  to  understand  through  the  Board  what  our  instructions 
are." 

Accordingly,  in  the  "Instruction  of  the  Prudential  Committee 
of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  to  Rev.  Messrs.  E.  Walker,  C.  Eells,  A.  B. 
Smith  and  W.  H.  Gray,  March  18,  1838,"  the  original  Mss.  of  which 
is  now  among  the  documents  of  the  Oregon  Historical  Society  (and 
a  copy  of  which  covers  29  pp.  letter  size  double  space  type-written 
Mss.),  we  find  the  following:  "On  your  long  journey  and  after  your 
arrival  at  the  place  of  your  destination,  you  will  have  more  or  less 
intercourse  with  the  gentlemen  engaged  in  the  Indian  trade,  es- 
pecially with  those  connected  with  the  American  Fur  Company  and 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company.  They  will  be  your  companions  in 
travel  and,  during  the  last  half  of  your  journey,  you  will  often  stop 
at  their  trading  posts.  From  these,  your  predecessors  in  the  field 
have  received  the  most  friendly  and  hospitable  treatment,  and  we 


56  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

have  no  reason  to  doubt  that  they  will  extend  similar  facilities  to 
you  in  your  journeys  and  labors.  They  have  in  this  respect  laid 
your  brethren  and  the  Board  under  great  obligations,  of  which  we 
take  pleasure  in  making  this  public  acknowledgment.  We  are  con- 
fident that  you,  in  your  turn,  will  be  to  them  courteous  and  respect- 
ful, rendering  them  aid,  meeting  their  wishes,  and  especially  min- 
istering to  them  of  spiritual  things,  as  far  as  the  accomplishment  of 
your  work  among  the  Indians  will  ])ermit;  thus  showing  that  you 
value  their  friendship  and  are  grateful  for  their  favors.  You,  of 
course,  hardly  need  to  be  reminded  that  you  are  in  no  manner  to 
interfere  with  their  trade,  but  scrupulously  to  stand  aloof  from 
ever^'thing  which  may  awaken  jealousy  on  this  point.  Your  objects 
are  entirely  dilferent  from  theirs.  Theirs  are  the  ordinary  gains  of 
traffic ;  yours  to  introduce  and  establish  Christianity." 

Yet  in  face  of  this  positive  instruction  from  the  American  Board 
to  its  missionaries  made  at  the  request  of  Whitman  and  Spalding 
through  Gray,  not  to  have  anything  to  do  with  the  fur  trade,  in  the 
progress  of  the  development  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story 
we  find  the  following  on  page  74  of  Spalding's  pamphlet  (Sen.  Ex. 
Doc.  37)  in  the  "Resolutions  adopted  by  the  Pleasant  Butte  Baptist 
Church  of  Linn  County,  Oregon,  October  22,  1869 : 

"By  the  crossing  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  in  1834  (four  years  be- 
fore any  Romish  ])riest  set  foot  in  Oregon),  by  the  Protestant  Lee, 
the  i)ioneer  missionary,  and  his  little  band,  to  become  permanent 
missionaries  and  settlers  on  this  coast.  And  the  undaunted  patriot- 
ism exhibited  by  this  Christian  hero  in  his  first  interview  Avith  the 
governor  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  then  a  corrupt  British 
mono])oly  on  this  coast.  The  governor  said  to  Mr.  Lee:  "All  needed 
supplies  and  facility  in  our  power  shall  be  afforded  to  your  mission 
while  you  confine  yourselves  to  your  work  as  teachers,  but  the  day 
you  lay  hands  on  beaver  all  supplies  will  be  stopped,  and  you  will 
be  left  destitute.  The  trade  in  furs  and  the  commerce  of  these  seas 
belong  to  us."  The  reply  of  this  missionary,  American  withal,  was 
prompt  and  characteristic :  "Governor,  it  is  true  I  was  born  a  Brit- 
ish subject;  but  I  am  now  an  American  citizen,  and  as  such  I  have 
and  shall  claim  the  same  right  on  these  shores  as  the  most  favored 
British  subject,  and  that  too  by  treaty.  I  shall  therefore  trade 
beaver  where  and  when  I  please."  The  same  reply,  almost  word  for 
word,  was  made  two  years  later  to  the  same  English  officer,  by  that 
faithful  Christian  but  stern  patriot,  Marcus  Whitman.  That  deter- 
mined the  fate  of  both  of  these  valuable  men ;  they  fell  martyrs  to 
this  their  country.  The  destruction  of  the  one  was  brought  about 
through  apostate  Americans  and  disaffected  friends  employed  to 
misrepresent;  that  of  the  other  by  imported  Romish  agents  and 
Hudson's  Ba}'  interpreters  worikng  upon  the  savages."    These  reso- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  57 

lutions  contain  abundant  proof  that  they  were  written  by  Spalding 
as  was  pretty  much  everything  else  in  the  pamphlet. 

In  1839,  Gray,  having  quarreled  with  all  his  associates,  began 
to  scheme  to  desert  the  mission,  which  he  finally  did  in  Sept.,  1842, 
in  a  manner  that  Rev.  C.  Eells  and  Rev.  E.  Walker  denounced  as 
dishonorable  and  deceptive. 

His  first  step  was  to  apply  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  for  the  po- 
sition of  teacher  of  their  school  at  Ft.  Vancouver  for  his  wife,  and 
employment  for  himself  in  some  capacity,  (not  named  in  the  evi- 
dence, but  probably  at  his  ''profession"  of  cabinet  maker  or  car- 
penter). 

His  application  was  promptly  declined  on  the  ground  that  the 
company  had  no  satisfactory  evidence  that  the  Mission  were  will- 
ing that  he  should  sever  his  connection  with  it.  (Cf.  on  these  points 
Gray's  testimony  in  case  of  the  H.  B.  Co.  vs.  the  U.  S.,  Part  2,  Chap- 
ter III.,  infra,  and  C.  Eells'  letter  of  Oct.  3,  1842,  to  D.  Greene, 
secretary,  endorsed  as  correct  [especially  in  its  criticism  of  Gray's 
course]  by  Rev.  E.  Walker,  Part  2,  Chapter  IV.,  infra.) 

Forthwith  Gray  reported  to  the  American  Board  that  there  was 
a  rupture  of  the  friendly  relations  that  had  previously  existed  be- 
tween their  missionaries  in  Oregon  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  which 
being  reported  back  to  Whitman,  in  1840,  in  a  letter  from  D.  Greene, 
evoked  a  most  emphatic  contradiction  from  Whitman  in  his  of  July 
13,  1841,  in  which  he  wrote  "Your  fears  lest  our  good  understand- 
ing with  the  gentlemen  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  should  have  been 
interrupted  are  not  well  founded,  for  it  has  remained  undisturbed 
up  to  this  date,  indeed  we  never  were  on  better  terms  than  at 
present."  And  the  evidence  hereinafter  presented  in  Chapter  VII., 
on  "The  Truth  About  the  Relation  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  the 
American  Exploration,  Occupation  and  Settlement  of  Oregon," 
demonstrates  beyond  dispute  that  this  good  understanding  re- 
mained unimpaired  till  the  destruction  of  the  Mission  by  the  mas- 
sacre in  Nov.,  1847.  Yet,  when  Gray  published  his  "History,"  in 
1870,  he  declared,  (p.  183)  "From  that  time  forward"  [i.  e.,  the  fall 
of  1839)  "a  marked  change  was  manifest  in  the  feelings  of  most 
of  the  gentlemen  of  the  company." 

(P.  118)  Gray  says,  "Whitman  and  his  four  men  opened  it  (i  e,, 
the  wagon  road  to  Oregon)  as  far  as  they  could  with  a  light  wagon 
and  a  cart.  To  him  must  be  given  the  credit  of  the  first  practical 
experiment,  though  Ashley,  Bonneville  and  Bridger  had  taken 
wagons  into  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  left  them,  and  pronounced 
the  experiment  a  failure,  and  a  wagon  road  impracticable.  Whit- 
man's perseverance  demonstrated  a  great  fact — the  practicability 
of  a  wagon  road  over  the  Rocky  Mountains." 


58  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

(P.  133)  Gray  says  that  at  Ft.  Hall,  ''Miles  Goodyear  left  the 
Mission  party,"  and  continues,  "This  loss  of  manual  strength  to  the 
Mission  party  compelled  the  Doctor  to  curtail  his  wagon,  so  he 
made  a  cart  on  two  of  the  wheels,  j)laced  the  axle  tree  and  the  other 
two  wheels  on  his  cart,  and  about  the  1st  of  August,  183(5,  our  camp 
was  again  in  motion."  Idem.  (p.  140)  "At  this  place  (i.  e.,  Ft. 
Boise)  "McLeod  and  McKay,  and  all  the  Johnny  Crapauds  of  the 
company  united  in  the  opinion  that  it  was  impossible  to  get  the 
Doctor's  cart  any  farther  without  taking  it  all  apart  .  .  .  and 
packing  it  .  .  .  After  several  consultations,  and  some  very  de- 
cided expressions  against  any  further  attempt  to  take  the  wagon 
further,  a  com|)romise  was  made,  that  after  the  ])arty  had  reached 
their  permanent  location  the  Doctor  or  Mr.  Gray  would  return  with 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Com])any's  caravan  and  get  the  wagon  and  bring 
it  through."  Wh}'  neither  he  nor  Dr.  Whitman  ever  sent  for  the 
cart  left  at  Ft.  Boise,  Gray  vouchsafes  no  information.  In  the 
whole  (!2-i  i>ages  of  his  History,  Gray  not  only  does  not  quote  one 
sentence  from  the  contemporary  correspondence  and  diaries  of  the 
various  members  of  the  American  Board  Mission  in  Oregon,  but  he 
gives  no  intimation  that  any  such  matter  existed  at  the  headquar- 
ters of  the  American  lioard  in  Boston  and  in  the  possession  of  the 
friends  and  relations  of  the  missionaries  to  the  amount  of  nearly  or 
quite  one  million  words. 

Possibly  some  of  his  friends  might  urge  in  his  defense  that  it 
was  a  long  and  expensive  journey  from  Oregon  to  Boston,  in  18G6- 
70,  more  than  a  dozen  years  before  there  was  any  transcontinental 
railroad  into  Oregon. 

But  what  can  be  said  in  defense  of  Rev.  Wm.  Barrows,  who  not 
only  lived  most  of  his  life  in  and  close  to  Boston,  but  for  six  years — 
1873-79 — just  before  he  "threw  together"  his  "Oregon,"  as  Secre- 
tary of  the  Massachusetts  Home  Missionary  Society  had  his  office 
in  the  same  building  as  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.,  and  must  have  known  of 
all  the  corresftondence  therein  existing,  and  yet,  as  Prof.  Bourne 
says,  not  only  "Successfully  resisted  the  temptation"  to  examine 
and  quote  any  of  it,  but,  from  title  page  to  finis  of  his  book  never 
even  alludes  to  its  existence,  but  instead  of  these  oi-iginal  sources 
of  the  history  of  American  Board  Mission  in  Oregon  relies  on  Gray's 
History  of  Oregon,  Spalding's  Pamphlet  (Ex.  Doc.  37),  and  Kev.  M. 
Eells'  Indian  Missions,  (which  is  as  untrustworthy  as  Gray  or 
Spalding),  and,  more  than  all  else,  on  his  own  vivid  and  myth- 
loving  imagination. 

Naturally  in  his  book  the  "Whitman's  old  wagon"  myth  blos- 
soms out  in  its  wildest  form,  as  witness  the  following  quotations, 
page  140,  chapter  XVI.,  "Whitman's  Old  Wagon":  "The  Oregon 
question  finally  turned  on    wheels     .     .     .     Then    diplomacy,  civil 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  59 

engineering  and  the  two  nations — all  concerned — had  to  wait  for 
the  wagons.  The  taking  one  through  overland  to  the  Columbia  by 
Dr.  Whitman  was  the  most  important  act  in  all  preliminaries  in 
the  settlement  of  the  Oregon  controversy.  At  first  only  two  parties 
took  a  proper  view  of  a  wagon  for  Oregon — Marcus  Whitman  and 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  In  1836,  when  the  wagon  was  at  Fort  Hall 
and  Fort  Boise  with  its  two  women  occupants,  it  suggested  to  the 
Company  the  family  and  a  civilized  home  and  permanent  settle- 
ment in  Oregon,  and  a  highway  from  the  Missouri  to  that  settle- 
ment which  others  could  follow.  The  Company  therefore  deter- 
mined to  turn  the  wagon  back,  or  divert  it  to  California,  or  stop  it 
absolutely.  Dr.  Whitman  took  the  same  view  of  the  wagon,  and 
therefore  concluded  to  take  it  through  to  Oregon." 

(P.  142)  "Arrived  at  Ft.  Hall  ...  all  parties,  mission,  and 
Hudson's  Bay  and  the  postmen,  too,  combined  to  say  that  the  wagon 
could  be  hauled  no  farther  .  .  .  But  the  iron  Doctor  was  im- 
movable .  .  .  Finally  the  indomitable  man  made  a  compromise, 
converted  the  wagon  into  a  cart,  loaded  in  the  duplicate  wheels  and 
axletree  and  started  again  on  wheels  for  the  Columbia." 

(P.  142)  Speaking  of  what  took  place  at  Ft.  Boise,  Barrows 
says:  'finally  a  compromise  was  effected.  The  wagon  should  be 
left  at  Ft.  Boise,  till  some  one  could  come  back  and  take  it  on  to 
the  established  mission  .  .  .  and  soon  after  the  'old  wagon' 
went  through,  the  first  to  pass  the  plains  and  the  mountains  so  far 
towards  Oregon."  So  (on  p.  14.5)  he  says:  "The  'Old  Wagon'  of 
Marcus  Whitman  .  .  .  finally  and  later  came  out  all  right  on 
the  lower  Columbia  at  Ft.  Walla  Walla."  P.  146  he  says:  "The 
wagon  and  the  two  brides,  Mrs.  Whitman  and  Mrs.  Spalding,  had 
won  Oregon.  The  first  wheels  had  marked  the  prairie,  and  brushed 
the  sage,  and  grazed  the  rocks  and  cut  the  river  banks  all  the  way 
from  the  Missouri  to  the  Columbia."  As  to  the  "two  brides,"  it  is 
proper  to  observe  that  the  Spaldings  were  married  Oct.  12,  1833, 
and  Mrs.  Spalding  had  borne  and  buried  a  child  before  Whitman 
invited  them  to  go  to  Oregon  in  February,  1836,  and,  except  in  such 
romances  as  the  Whitman  Legend,  a  woman  is  supposed  to  cease 
to  be  "a  bride"  some  time  before  she  bears  a  child — (Cf.  on  this 
"Sketch  of  Life  of  H.  H.  Spalding  in  Trans.  Oregon  Pioneers'  Asso- 
ciation," 1897,  p.  107) — and  as  to  the  child  (which  none  of  the  ro- 
mancers wishing  to  represent  this  as  a  double  bridal  tour  have  ever 
alluded  to),  Cf.  Whitman's  letters  to  D.  Greene,  secretary,  dated 
Rushville,  N.  Y.,  January  29,  1836,  as  follows:  "Your  allusion  to 
Mr.  Spalding  is  incorrect.  They  lost  their  child  by  death  some  time 
since." 

(P.  147)  Writing  of  the  journey  of  the  1838  reinforcement  to 
the  American  Board  Mission — consisting  of  Rev.  C.  Eells,  E.  Walker, 


GO  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

A.  B.  Smith  and  their  wives,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  W.  H.  Gray  and  Mr. 
Cornelius  Rogers,  Barrows  says  of  their  experiences  at  Ft.  Hall : 
''Impediments,  perils  and  Indians  do  not  seem  to  have  been  put 
before  them  at  that  fur  traders'  Gibraltar,  for  they  had  no  car- 
riages." 

"They  had  acted  on  the  already  well-established  impression  in 
the  East  that  carriages  could  not  travel  to  Oregon."  But  W.  H. 
Gray  in  his  History  of  Oregon,  (p.  177),  says:  "In  the  winter  of 
1837-8  Gray  is  in  the  States  giving  an  account  of  his  trip  across  the 
Rocky  Mountains  with  Messrs.  Spalding  and  Whitman  and  of  .  . 
the  fact  that  a  wagon  had  been  taken  by  Dr.  Whitman  and  his  party 
to  Ft.  Boise,  and  that  it  could  be  taken  to  the  Wallamet  Settle- 
ment." 

That  there  was  no  "well-established  impression  in  the  East  that 
carriages  could  not  travel  to  Oregon"  is  evident  from  the  fact  that 
this  party  started  with  a  wagon,  as  appears  from  the  following 
extract  from  a  letter  of  W.  H.  Gray  to  I).  Greene,  secretary,  (from 
which  nothing  has  yet  been  published),  dated  Rendezvous,  Wind 
River  Mountains,  July  (no  day),  1838.  On  p.  8,  after  explaining 
that  they  had  been  compelled  to  dispose  of  a  wagon  in  trade  for  a 
mule  at  a  loss  of  |45,  because  it  was  old  and  not  adapted  to  the 
trip,  he  says:  "The  wagon  we  purchased  to  supply  the  place  of  the 
one  sent  by  Dr.  Weed"  (which  was  the  old  one  before  referred  to) 
"we  have  exchanged  for  a  horse  with  Capt.  Fontenelle,  who  kindly 
exchanged  with  us  when  we  could  bring  it  no  further  for  want  of 
horses."  This,  bear  in  mind,  was  27  years  before  there  was  any 
"Whitman  Saved  Oregon"  tale  invented,  and  when  there  was  no 
temptation,  even  to  Gray's  mendacious  mind,  to  falsely  accuse  that 
awful  Hudson's  Bay  Company  of  stopping  the  wagon,  which  he  ad- 
mits they  had  traded  off  to  an  American  fur  trader  at  some  point 
more  than  350  miles  east  of  Ft.  Hall,  not  from  any  opposition  of 
fur  traders  to  its  further  progress,  nor  on  account  of  the  difficul- 
ties of  the  way,  but  because  they  "could  bring  it  no  further  for  want 
of  horses."  This  swai)ping  of  the  wagon  for  a  horse  took  place  at 
Ft.  Laramie.  (Cf.  Mrs.  Eells'  Diary  in  Tr.  Oregon  Pioneers'  Asso- 
ciation, 1889,  p.  73.) 

Dr.  W^eed  kept  a  religious  book  store  in  Cincinnati  for  many 
years,  and  was  the  agent  there  for  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  He  was  the 
father  of  Geo.  J^udington  \Veed,  wiio  has  written  two  of  the  most 
wildly  extravagant  and  grotesquely  fictitious  newspaper  articles  in 
support  of  the  Whitman  Legend  that  have  ever  been  printed.  (Cf. 
Ladies'  Home  Journal,  November,  1897,  and  Sundaj)  School  Times, 
August  23,  1902.) 

(P.  152)  Barrows  says:  "Now  such  a  company  ,(/.  c,  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Company)  was  driven  into  anxiety.     It  was  confronted 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  61 

and  troubled  and  forced  into  strategy  by  an  'old  wagon.'  Under 
this  fear"  (i.  e.,  that  if  wagons  went  through  they  would  lose  Ore- 
gon) "they  fought  all  its  kith  and  kin  as  they  drove  up  to  Ft.  Hall, 
and  they  spread  the  impression  through  the  United  States  from 
New  Hampshire  to  Texas,  that  wheels  could  not  be  driven  from  the 
Snake  River  Valley  to  the  Columbia." 

(P.  153)  "Not  only  did  the  Company  hold  this  known  pass  by 
representing  it  to  be  impassable  for  carriages,  but  they  kept  the 
knowledge  of  other  passes  a  secret." 

(P.  166)  Speaking  of  Whitman's  ride  to  the  States  in  1842-3, 
and  his  arrival  at  Ft.  Hall,  Barrows  says:  "If  Capt.  Grant  and 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  generally  made  a  mistake  in  letting  Dr.  Whit- 
man through  with  his  old  wagon  six  years  before,  they  made  a 
greater  one  in  letting  him  return  on  horseback  to  the  States."  I 
shall  present  the  most  indisputable  evidence  that  no  Hudson's  Bay 
Company's  oflScers  or  men  made  any  objection  to  Whitman's  trying 
the  experiment  of  driving  his  wagon  to  and  beyond  Ft,  Hall,  nor 
did  any  one  of  them  otfer  the  slightest  opposition  to  his  return  to 
the  States. 

Furthermore,  Grant  was  not  at  Ft.  Hall  six,  nor  five,  nor  four, 
nor  three,  nor  two  j^ears  before  this,  but  came  there  to  take  com- 
mand less  than  one  year  before  this  time,  as  witness  the  following 
extract  from  a  letter  of  A.  McKinley  (who  was  in  command  at  Ft. 
Walla  W\alla  from  1841  to  1846),  to  Hon.  Elwood  Evans,  quoted 
by  Mr.  Evans  in  Seattle  Daily  Intellige^icer  of  April  28,  1881: 

"The  Red  River  Colony  arrived  at  Walla  Walla  when  the  old 
fort  was  burned,  October  3,  1841.  The  express  from  Selkirk  ar- 
rived about  the  25th  of  October,  in  charge  of  Mr,  Richard  Grant, 
afterwards  for  several  years  in  charge  of  Ft.  Hall. 

"In  1842  not  a  single  immigrant  came  from  Red  River  to  Ore- 
gon." So  Grant  had  no  more  to  do  with  hindering  or  helping  Whit- 
man about  his  wagon  in  1836,  than  Rev.  Wm.  Barrows  himself  had, 
and,  as  we  shall  see  later,  the  contemporaneous  testimony  of  every 
American  who  was  at  Ft,  Hall  while  Grant  was  in  command  there 
(*.  e.,  from  1842  to  1851)  was  that  Grant's  treatment  of  all  Ameri- 
cans who  reached  Ft.  Hall  on  the  way  to  Oregon  was  uniformly 
kind  and  courteous. 

Nixon,  of  course,  accepts  these  fictions  of  Barrows  about  Grant 
as  authentic  history,  and  gives  freest  rein  to  his  own  very  lively 
and  unrestrained  imagination  in  embellishing  in  the  most  lurid 
"newspaperish"  English  his  ideas  of  Grant's  interview  with  Whit- 
man, in  October,  1842.  So  much  easier  is  it  to  dash  down  a  his- 
tory (?)  of  Oregon,  as  one  does  an  editorial  for  the  Inter-Ocean 
from  "one's  own  interior  consciousness,"  assisted  by  intense  re- 
ligious prejudices,  than  to  patiently  study  contemporaneous  evi- 


62  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

deuce  to  learn  what  actually  occurred.  (Cf.  Nixon's  ''How  Marcus 
Whitman  Saved  Ore{>:on,"  pp.  109-110.) 

Barrows  (p.  171 1  says  of  Whitman:  "The  same  man  this  is 
who  made  the  Kocky  Mountains  give  up  to  a  wagon." 

(P.  247)  Writing  of  the  arrival  of  the  1843  migration  at  Ft. 
Hall,  Barrows  says:  ''Serious  troubles  confronted  the  Doctor.  He 
could  feed  a  thousand  people  on  the  plains,  ford  the  rivers  and 
force  the  mountains,  but  to  run  the  gauntlet  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
post,  whose  interests  were  so  deeply  involved  in  stopping  him,  was 
another  labor."  ...  (P.  246)  "A  desperate  effort  must  be  made" 
(/.  e.,  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company's  officers  at  Ft.  Hall)  ''to 
scatter  or  divert  or  turn  back  the  company"  (?.  e.,  the  1843  migra- 
tion.) .  .  .  "At  this  point  many  immigrant  companies  had 
been  intimidated  and  broken  up,  and  so  Ft.  Hall  served  as  a  cover 
to  Oregon,  just  as  a  battery  at  the  mouth  of  a  river  protects  the 
inland  city  on  its  banks."  (P.  249)  "Here  the  postmen  had  made 
the  fatal  mistake  of  allowing  the  'old  wagon'  of  the  Doctor  to  go 
through  seven  years  before     .     .     .     Oregon  was  taken  at  Ft.  Hall." 

As  we  shall  see  in  this  chapter,  and  in  the  chapter  on  ''The  Truth 
About  the  Kelation  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  to  the  American 
Exploration,  Occupation  and  Settlement  of  Oregon,"  all  this  about 
opposition  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  at  Ft.  Hall — or  anywhere 
else — in  1836,  or  1843  — or  at  any  other  time — to  wagons  going  to 
Oregon  is  pure  fiction,  not  only  absolutely  destitute  of  any  support 
in  contemporaneous  letters,  diaries,  reports  of  government  officers, 
and  books  published  in  1838,  1839,  1840,  1845  and  1847,  by  ex- 
plorers, and  travelers  and  emigrants  to  Oregon,  but  is  squarely  con- 
tradicted by  all  those  contemporaneous  documents  published  and 
unpublished,  the  writers  of  every  one  of  which  gratefully  acknowl- 
edge their  obligations  to  the  officers  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company 
for  their  most  kind  and  hospitable  reception  and  treatment  at  all 
their  various  posts  in  the  Oregon  Territory,  especially  Ft.  Hall,  Ft. 
Boise,  Ft.  Walla  Walla  and  Ft.  Vancouver. 

Barrows,  who  never  saw  it — calls  Ft.  Hall  "This  fur  traders' 
Gibraltar,"  but  Col.  Wm.  Gilpin — a  graduate  of  West  Point,  who 
accompanied  Fremont  to  Oregon  in  1843,  and  returned  via  Ft.  Hall 
and  the  Spanish  Trail  to  Bent's  Fort  in  1844,  and  afterwards  took 
a  prominent  part  in  the  Mexican  War,  and  was  subsequently  Gov- 
ernor of  Colorado — ^(and  as  such  organized  the  little  army  that 
utterly  routed  the  Confederate  army  sent  under  Gen.  Sibley  to  con- 
quer New  Mexico  and  Colorado,  and,  if  possible,  California),  on 
February  8,  1867,  in  Washington,  D.  C,  testified  in  the  famous  case 
of  "The  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  vs.  the  U.S."  (Cf.  vol.  6,  pp.  330  et  seq.  of 
report  of  that  case)  as  follows:  That  he  was  at  Ft.  Hall  several 
days  in  1843  on  his  way  to  Oregon,  and  several  weeks  in  the  sum- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  63 

mer  of  1844  on  his  return;  that  it  was  a  small  quadrangular  trad- 
ing post,  about  100  feet  square,  built  of  adobies  (or  sun-dried  bricks) 
and  log  cabins,  occupied  by  about  eleven  men,  designed  for  mere 
temporary  use  for  the  protection  of  stores,  and  trade  with  the  In- 
dians; that  having  built  such  structures  himself,  and  having  once 
been  in  treaty  for  the  purchase  of  Bent's  Fort,  he  was  well  ac- 
quainted with  the  value  of  such  establishments,  and  that  he  should 
consider  $2,000  a  liberal  jH'ice  to  pay  for  all  the  buildings  he  saw 
at  Ft.  Hall. 

The  magnifying  by  Barrows  of  this  little  |2,000  trading  post 
''occupied  by  about  eleven  men"  into  a  "fur  traders'  Gibraltar"  is  a 
perfectly  fair  example  of  the  way  Barrows'  imagination  swelled  and 
distorted  every  fact  connected  in  any  way  with  Whitman's  relation 
to  Oregon. 

With  the  publication  of  Barrows'  Oregon,  in  1883,  the  "wagon 
myth"  concerning  Marcus  Whitman  may  be  regarded  as  fully  de- 
veloped, though  some  of  the  later  myth  loving  advocates  of  the 
Whitman  Legend,  notably  Geo.  Ludington  Weed,  Rev.  Jonathan 
Edwards,  and  Rev.  L.  H.  Hallock,  have  added  "some  frills  and 
feathers  of  ornamentation"  to  it  with  which  even  Barrows'  fervid 
imagination,  wholly  unlimited  as  it  was  by  any  sense  of  obligation 
to  inquire  into  the  truth  of  what  his  fancy  impelled  him  to  write, 
did  not  venture  to  adorn  his  story. 

We  are  now  ready  to  examine  the  contemporaneous  evidence  and 
learn  the  true  story  of  the  whole  of  the  discovery  of  routes  practi- 
cable for,  and  the  speedy  development  of  the  first  wagon  road  across 
the  continent,  and  to  learn  how  very  trifling  was  Whitman's  part  in 
that  matter. 

But  before  we  can  understand  with  what  ease  many  routes  prac- 
ticable for  wagons  when  almost  or  entirely  in  a  state  of  nature  were 
discovered  along  the  whole  eastern  edge  of  the  old  Oregon  Territory, 
from  42  degrees  to  47  degrees  north  latitude,  and  the  speed  with 
which  a  wagon  road  was  developed  over  not  only  the  Main  Range 
of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  but  over  all  the  outlying  ranges  as  far 
West  as  the  Cascades,  without  any  governmental  expenditure  even 
for  a  survey  of  the  route  we  must  know  a  little  of  the  peculiar  geo- 
graphical features  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  region. 

The  whole  Appalachian  system  before  the  whites  settled  our 
country  was  covered  with  dense  forests  stretching  far  out  east  and 
west  from  their  bases,  and  generally  full  of  a  dense  undergrowth 
of  vines  and  shrubs,  which  rendered  the  exploration  of  their  slopes 
and  the  discovery  of  passes  over  their  summits  an  exceedingly  slow 
and  laborious  task. 

In  the  Rocky  Mountain  region,  on  the  contrary,  timber  covers 
but  a  small  part  of  the  higher  slopes  of  the  ranges,  all  the  lower 


t)4  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

slopes  and  the  foothills  and  the  plains  stretching  hundreds  of  miles 
away  to  the  east,  and  the  great  interior  plateaus  and  basins  and 
broad  valleys  of  the  larger  rivers  west  of  the  Main  Range  as  far  as 
the  Sierra  Nevada  and  Cascade  Mountains  being  almost  entirely 
destitute  of  trees  except  here  and  there  a  little  grove  in  a  moist 
spot,  and  a  narrow  fringe — generally  of  cottonwood,  and  poplar, 
and  box  elder,  and  alders,  and  willows — along  the  banks  of  the 
streams.  The  forests  of  the  Avhole  Rocky  Mountain  region  on  the 
borders  of  and  within  the  Old  Oregon  Territory,  as  far  west  as  the 
Cascade  ^lountains,  were  almost  entirely  of  conifers — pines,  firs, 
hemlocks,  cedars,  etc. — and  in  the  Rocky  Mountains  proper  rarely 
began  below  0,000  to  7,500  feet  above  the  sea  level,  and  were  rarely 
continuous  for  any  great  distances,  but  were  interspersed  with 
great  stretches  of  grass  land,  which  cover  generally  much  more  than 
one-half  the  area  within  the  forest  belt  on  the  mountains. 

Furthermore,  the  forests  rarely  have  much  undergrowth,  and 
the  trees  usually  are  so  scattering  that  there  is  not  the  slightest 
difficulty  in  riding  on  horseback  where  one  chooses  in  the  forests, 
except  as  fallen  timber  from  fires  and  storms  sometimes  blocks  the 
way,  and  very  often  one  can  drive  a  wagon  with  very  little  trouble 
through  the  forests  for  long  distances  with  only  cutting  here  and 
there  a  tree. 

This  openness  of  the  country  has  been  one  of  the  most  potent 
factors  in  the  speedy  exploration  and  settlement  of  the  whole  region 
beyond  the  Great  Plains,  since  from  the  summit  of  a  range  one  can 
''read  the  face  of  the  country"  in  the  valleys  on  either  side  as  easily 
as  one  can  read  the  pages  of  an  open  book,  and  often,  after  study- 
ing for  an  hour  or  two  with  a  field  glass  the  landscape  below  him, 
tracing  every  turn  and  winding  not  only  of  the  main  stream  that 
drains  it,  but  also  of  each  of  its  tributaries,  by  the  belt  of  trees 
along  the  courses  of  all  the  larger  streams  and  the  ribbon  of  shrubs 
and  bushes  along  the  smaller  ones,  one  can  make  a  more  accurate 
map  of  a  region  covering  one  or  two  or  three  or  four  hundred  square 
miles  in  which  he  has  not  even  so  much  as  set  his  foot,  than  any  one 
could  have  made  of  an  equal  area  in  the  Appalachian  system  masked 
wilh  dense  forests  after  spending  many  weeks  in  constantly  travel- 
ing over  it. 

But  the  special  feature  in  the  structure  of  the  Rocky  Mountains 
that  made  the  opening  of  a  transcontinental  wagon  road  a  very 
easy  matter  is  the  wonderful  breaking  down  of  the  whole  range 
between  41  degrees  and  47  degrees  north  latitude. 

The  Rocky  Mountains  culminate  in  so  remarkable  a  manner  in 
Colorado,  that  in  that  State  between  37  degrees  and  41  degrees 
north  latitude  are  some  70  peaks  more  than  14,000  feet  high,  and 
no  pass  exists  across  the  Main  Range  in  that  State  less  than  about 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  65 

11,000  feet  above  the  sea,  and  they  range  up  from  that  to  more  than 
13,000  feet,  while  going  northwest  along  the  Main  Range  from  there 
to  British  America,  a  distance  along  the  windings  of  the  range 
much  more  than  twice  as  many  miles  as  from  the  southern  to  the 
northern  boundary  of  Colorado,  not  a  single  peak  rises  to  the  height 
of  14,000  feet,  and  very  few  reach  even  13,000  feet,  while  the  passes 
— of  which  there  are  many — range  from  5,800  feet  to  8,500  feet 
above  the  sea,  or  fully  3,000  to  4,000  feet  lower  than  in  Colorado, 
and  several  of  these  passes  are  broad,  grassy  valleys  of  such  gentle 
slope  and  so  flat  on  their  summits  that  even  those  of  us  who  have 
often  crossed  them  on  horesback  are  always  in  doubt  when  we  have 
reached  the  top,  and  are  only  satisfied  of  it  when  we  find  some 
little  watercourse  running  to  the  other  ocean. 

Between  1866  and  1905  I  have  crossed  the  Main  Range  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains  seventy-six  times  over  twenty-six  difl'erent  passes 
between  35  degrees  and  47  degrees  north  latitude,  of  which  thirteen 
led  directly  into  the  Old  Oregon  Territory  and  two  others  led  into 
what  was  formerly  Mexican  territory  (now  in  Southwest  Wyo- 
ming), very  near  the  southeast  corner  of  the  Old  Oregon  Territory. 

Over  ten  of  these  passes  leading  directly  into  the  Old  Oregon 
Territory  I  have  ridden  twenty-eight  times  on  horseback.  All  these 
passes  were  well  known  to  and  used  by  our  fur  traders  several  years 
before  Whitman  or  anybody  else  dreamed  of  going  missionarying 
to  the  Oregon  Indians. 

It  is  impossible  for  me  to  recall  how  many  times  I  have  crossed 
the  various  spurs  and  outlying  ranges  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  sys- 
tem during  my  continuous  residence  from  June,  1866,  to  October, 
1875,  in  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  my  extensive  journeying  in  Colo- 
rado, New  Mexico,  Utah,  Montana,  Wyoming,  Idaho,  Nevada,  Ore- 
gon, Washington  and  California  since  that  time. 

Why  our  first  overland  expedition  in  their  westward  journey  in 
1805  did  not  find  any  of  the  three  easy  passes  by  the  entrances  of 
which  they  journeyed — the  Pipestone,  the  Deer  Lodge  and  Clark's 
or  Gibbon's — (the  last  of  which  they  discovered  on  their  return  trip 
in  1806) — I  have  not  space  to  explain,  but  it  was  not  because  they 
might  not  easily  have  been  found  had  the  party  been  mounted  in- 
stead of  in  canoes,  and  had  they  not  set  their  faces  so  steadfastly 
to  the  west  that  they  would  not  turn  to  the  north  or  the  northwest. 

On  their  return  trip  the  division  under  Capt.  Clark  discovered 
and  traversed  the  pass  commonly  known  as  Gibbon's,  though  it 
ought  forever  to  bear  the  name  of  Clark,  and  in  the  "History  of  the 
Expedition  Under  the  Command  of  Capts.  Lewis  and  Clark,"  vol. 
3,  p.  1128,  of  Coues'  edition  and  vol.  2,  pp.  285-6  of  the  1842  edition, 
it  is  thus  mentioned :  "They  had  now  crossed  from  Travelers'  Rest 
Creek  to  the  head  of  Jefferson's  River,  which  seems  to  form  the  best 


66  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

and  shortest  route  over  the  mountains  during  almost  the  whole 
distance  of  one  hundred  and  sixty-four  miles. 

'^It  is,  in  fact,  a  very  excellent  road ;  and  by  cutting  down  a  few 
trees  it  might  be  rendered  a  good  route  for  wagons,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  about  four  miles  over  one  of  the  mountains,  which  would 
require  some  leveling.'' 

On  this  Dr.  Coues  prints  the  following  note:  ''It  seems  almost 
incredible  that  tlie  modesty  or  the  indifference  of  the  great  explorer 
should  have  led  him  to  dismiss  this  part  of  his  route  without  fur- 
ther remark.  A  road  of  164  miles  across  the  great  Continental  Di- 
vide— we  hardly  realize  what  it  meant  to  make  that  discovery  in 
180G." 

The  original  edition  of  the  ''History  of  the  Expedition  Tender 
the  Command  of  Capts.  Lewis  and  Clark"  (of  which  Dr.  Coues' 
edition  is  an  exact  reprint)  was  published  in  Philadelphia  in  1814, 
and  before  1818  three  editions  of  it  were  also  published  in  London, 
and  one  in  Dublin,  besides  which  it  was  translated  into  German, 
and  also  into  Dutch,  and  editions  were  published  in  Germany  and 
Holland. 

In  the  spring  of  1810  Andrew  Henry,  one  of  the  leading  men  in 
the  St.  Louis  "Missouri  Fur  Co.,"  founded  an  Indian  trading  post 
in  what  is  now  Montana,  about  two  miles  above  the  junction  of  the 
Madison  and  Jefferson  Rivers,  but  was  so  harassed  by  the  Blackfeet 
that  in  the  autumn  of  1810  he  abandoned  that  locality,  journeyed 
up  the  Madison  and  crossed  the  Continental  Divide,  and  established 
a  post  called  Ft.  Henry  on  Henry  Fork  of  the  Snake  River,  the 
stream  which  will  ever  perpetuate  Andrew  Henry's  name.  This 
post  was  about  fifty  miles  southwest  of  Henry  Lake  and  near  where 
the  town  of  Egin,  Idaho,  now  stands. 

As  Ft.  Henry  was  only  about  forty  to  fifty  miles  a  little  east  of 
south  of  the  summit  of  Beaver  Caiion  Pass  (over  which  many  thou- 
sands of  the  early  settlers  of  Montana  went  with  their  wagons  be- 
fore there  was  any  expenditure  of  money  in  making  a  road,  and  over 
which  the  Oregon  Short  Line  Railroad  now  goes),  there  is  every 
probability  that  Henry  traversed  that  pass  also  while  occupying  Ft. 
Henry. 

This  ])ost  was  abandoned  in  the  spring  of  1811,  an  event  which 
had  much  to  do  with  the  disastrous  experiences  of  the  overland  por- 
tion of  the  Astoria  expedition,  who  occupied  this  abandoned  post 
for  ten  days  in  October,  1811.  Henry  Fork  is  a  beautiful  stream  of 
crystal  water  rising  in  Henry  Lake,  one  of  the  loveliest  little  lakes 
in  all  the  Rocky  Mountain  region,  of  irregular  outline,  covering 
about  twelve  miles,  swarming  with  salmon  trout,  and  the  summer 
home  of  countless  water  fowl — ducks,  geese,  brant,  swans,  pelicans, 
cranes,  herons,  gulls,  etc. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  67 

Around  its  shores  the  Continental  Divide  sweeps  in  a  very  short 
horseshoe  shaped  bend,  whose  opening  is  scarcely  a  score  of  miles 
across.  The  basin  of  the  lake  is  so  fiat  that  it  is  nowhere  more 
than  fifteen  feet  deep,  and  its  waters  will  not  average  more  than 
four  or  five  feet  in  depth. 

The  most  remarkable  thing,  however,  about  this  mountain  bend 
and  the  lake  that  rests  within  it  is  that  across  the  Continental  Di- 
vide three  passes,  each  easily  practicable  for  wagons,  converge  on 
the  shores  of  Henry  Lake  with  a  semicircle  of  less  than  fifteen  miles. 

Reynold's  Pass  leads  over  from  the  Madison  at  a  point  just 
below  its  second  or  middle  canon,  and  is  a  broad,  grassy  valley  of 
such  gentle  slope  that  one  has  no  idea  he  is  crossing  a  mountain 
range,  but  just  as  he  begins  to  inquire,  "When  are  we  going  to  leave 
this  valley  and  start  across  the  range?"  he  is  informed  that  he  has 
just  crossed  the  summit. 

About  seven  miles  to  the  southwest  around  the  shore  of  the  lake, 
and  almost  at  right  angles  to  Reynold's  Pass,  is  Tahgee  Pass,  com- 
ing also  from  the  Madison,  but  starting  between  its  middle  and 
upper  canons,  while  directly  opposite  the  mouth  of  Tahgee  Pass  is 
Red  Rock  Pass,  leading  over  to  Red  Rock  Lake,  the  source  of  the 
Red  Rock  Fork,  which  is  the  longest  tributary  of  the  Jefferson 
River — the  longest  of  the  three  streams  which  unite  to  form  the  Mis- 
souri— so  that  Red  Rock  Lake  is  the  beginning  of  the  longest  river 
in  the  world.  Over  all  these  passes  I  have  been  on  horseback,  and 
over  Reynold's  and  Tahgee  in  a  two-horse  wagon  before  any  money 
had  been  spent  on  the  former,  and  less  than  forty  dollars  on  Tahgee 
in  road  making. 

All  three  of  these  passes  must  have  been  perfectly  well  known  to 
Andrew  Henry  and  his  men  in  1810-11.  (Cf.  for  Henry's  experience 
near  the  junction  of  the  Madison  and  Jefferson,  and  his  founding 
and  abandonment  of  Ft.  Henry,  "The  History  of  the  American  Fur 
Trade  of  the  Far  West,  by  Hiram  M.  Chittenden,  Captain  Corps 
of  Engineers,  U.  S.  A.,"  N.  Y.,  F.  P.  Harper,  1902,  Vol.  I.,  143-4,  and 
Vol.  III.,  974.)  The  next  party  of  Americans  to  cross  the  Conti- 
nental Divide  was  the  Astoria  party,  who,  on  their  westward  jour- 
ney, from  fear  of  the  Blackfeet  Indians,  swung  so  far  to  the  south- 
west from  where  they  left  the  Missouri  River  at  the  Arickara  Vil- 
lages, as  to  cross  the  Continental  Divide  south  of  Yellowstone  Lake 
in  one  of  its  wildest  and  most  rugged  portions  along  the  whole  bor- 
der of  the  Old  Oregon  Territory,  and  so  they  discovered  on  their 
outbound  journey  no  easy  pass  practicable  for  wagons  but,  as  we 
have  already  seen  in  Chapter  IV.,  that  part  of  the  Astoria  party 
who  returned  overland  to  the  States  discovered,  in  November,  1812, 
the  pass  afterwards  known  as  the  South  Pass,  which  for  thirty 


68  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

years  after  its  rediscovery  in  1824  was  by  far  the  most  widely  known 
feature  of  the  Kocky  Mountains  in  Europe  as  well  as  America. 

So  far  therefore  is  it  from  being  true,  as  Barrows  states  (Ore- 
gon, p.  153)  ''Not  only  did  the  Company"  [i.  e.,  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.)  ''hold  this  known  pass  by  representing  it  to  be  impassable  for 
carriages,  but  they  kept  the  knowledge  of  other  passes  a  secret," 
that  before  the  lludson's  liay  (3o.  had  any  post  within  500  miles 
of  any  part  of  the  only  portion  of  the  Oregon  Territory  for  which 
we  were  really  contending  (/.  e.,  the  part  south  of  49  degrees),  al- 
most before  its  more  energetic  rival,  the  Canadian  "Northwest  Co.," 
had  succeeded  in  establishing  itself  at  any  point  in  the  Old  Oregon 
Territory  the  Americans  had  certainly  already  discovered  five  passes 
practicable  for  wagons  into  Oregon,  viz. :  Clark's,  Red  Rock,  Rey- 
nold's, Tahgee  and  South  Pass.  Besides  these  it  is  altogether  prob- 
able that  John  Colter  (who  had  at  his  own  request  been  discharged 
from  the  Lewis  and  Clark  party  on  its  return  trip,  that  he  might 
remain  in  the  mountains  and  trap  beaver)  had  before  1808  discov- 
ered IMpestone  and  Deer  Lodge  Passes  over  the  Continental  Divide 
in  Montana — the  former  situated  a  few  miles  south  of  the  Home- 
stake  Pass,  which  is  now  traversed  by  the  Northern  Pacific  Railroad, 
and  the  latter  by  the  Oregon  Short  Line — and  that  Henry  had  dis- 
covered Beaver  Canon  Pass. 

One  would  suppose,  to  read  Barrows  and  many  writers  who  have 
depended  on  him  as  an  authority,  that  mountain  passes,  instead  of 
being  great  natural  features  of  the  geographical  structure  of  the 
country — often  visible  dozens  and  scores  of  miles  away — were  nice 
little  toys,  that  a  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  trader  could  lock  up  in  his 
writing  desk,  or  wrap  in  a  bit  of  paper  and  hide  in  his  tobacco 
pouch. 

When  traveling  on  horseback  over  the  mountains  of  Idaho,  Mon- 
tana and  Wyoming,  I  have  often  beheld  these  passes,  like  mighty 
gateways  in  the  ranges,  twenty,  thirty,  forty,  fifty  and  even  sixty 
and  seventy-five  miles  away. 

Mr.  Barrows  and  those  who  have  endorsed  him  have  refrained 
from  telling  us  by  what  process  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  "kept  the 
knowledge  of  other  passes  a  secret"  from  the  hundreds  of  American 
trappers  and  traders  who  were  constantly  traveling  and  pursuing 
their  vocation  on  both  sides  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  after  1824 
(when  the  South  Pass  was  rediscovered).  None  but  fearless  and 
resolute  and  hardy  men  attempted  this  life,  and  a  most  rigorous 
"natural  selection"  soon  weeded  out  those  who  were  unfitted  for  it, 
so  that  those  who  renmined  in  it  were  as  keen-witted,  clear-eyed, 
energetic,  vigorous  and  resourceful  men  as  ever  explored  new  re- 
gions on  any  continent. 

To  suppose  that  from  such  men  as  W.  H.  Ashley,  L.  Maxwell, 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  69 

Thomas  Fitzpatrick,  A.  Godey,  Kit  Carson,  Milton  Sublette  and  his 
brother  W,  L.,  James  Bridger,  David  E.  Jackson,  Jedediah  Smith, 
Joseph  Walker,  J.  L.  Meek,  Caleb  Wilkins,  Robert  Newell,  and 
scores  of  other  American  mountaineers,  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. — or 
any  other  organization  on  earth — could  "keep  the  knowledge  of 
passes  a  secret"  is  a  proposition  so  inane  that  its  statement  is  its 
sufficient  refutation,  and  it  seems  to  be  one  of  the  very  many  of  the 
most  preposterous  fictions  about  the  Whitman  myth,  which  Bar- 
rows' fancy  invented. 

After  the  treachery  to  Mr.  Astor's  interests  of  his  partner  Mc- 
Dougal  had  put  the  Northwest  Co.  in  possession  of  Astoria,  our 
fur  traders  seem  to  have  confined  their  efforts  to  the  east  side  of  the 
Rockies,  and  mainly  to  the  region  along  the  Missouri  River,  till  in 
the  winter  of  1822-23,  in  a  quarrel  between  some  hunters  and  a  party 
of  Arickara  Indians,  two  of  the  latter  were  killed.  This  caused  the 
Arickara  Indians  on  June  2,  1823,  to  attack  Mr.  W.  H.  Ashley's 
party  of  thirty-five  men,  of  whom  they  killed  thirteen  and  wounded 
ten.  This  resulted  in  Col.  Leavenworth,  in  command  of  the  military 
post  at  Council  Bluffs,  proceeding  with  200  soldiers  against  the 
Indians,  and  in  a  battle  fought  August  10,  11  and  12,  1823,  they 
were  defeated,  Ashley  taking  part  in  the  fight  with  eighty  of  the 
employes  of  the  Missouri  Fur  Co.  (Cf.  Niles  Register,  August  9, 
1823,  and  October  11,  1823.)  The  result  of  this  was  that  Ashley 
withdrew  from  operations  on  the  Upper  Missouri,  and  determined 
to  follow  up  the  valley  of  the  Platte,  and  strive  to  cross  the  Conti- 
nental Divide  where  the  return  portion  of  the  Astoria  party  had 
crossed  it. 

This  he  succeeded  in  doing  in  1824,  and  crossing  first  the  Con- 
tinental Divide  on  to  Green  River,  and  next  the  range  between 
Green  and  Bear  Rivers,  he  followed  the  latter  stream  down  to  the 
Great  Salt  Lake,  and  explored  the  beautiful  valley  about  that  lake, 
and  following  the  Jordan  River  to  the  south  established  a  fort  on 
Utah  Lake,  some  forty  miles  south  of  where  the  Mormons  twenty- 
three  years  later  located  Salt  Lake  City. 

How  quickly  the  knowledge  of  this  important  discovery  reached 
the  earnest  friends  of  Oregon,  and  was  by  them  given  the  widest 
possible  publicity,  may  be  seen  from  this  description  of  the  pass 
given  by  Floyd  of  Virginia  in  a  debate  on  Oregon  in  the  House  of 
Representatives,  December  20,  1824.  (Cf.  Debates,  7iot  Abridgment 
of  Debates,  in  Congress,  18  Cong.,  2  Sess.,  p.  24.) 

After  speaking  of  easy  passes  discovered  at  the  headwaters  of 
the  Yellowstone  and  Big  Horn  Rivers,  and  declaring,  "Through 
them  you  may  pass  with  ease  and  safety,  so  much  so  that  I  have 
the  most  perfect  confidence  that  even  now  a  wagon  with  the  usual 
freight  could  be  taken  from  this  capital  to  the  mouth  of  the  Co- 


70  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

lunibia,"  he  goes  on :  ''Besides  these  passes  there  is  still  another, 
which  though  longer  to  the  upper  part  of  that  river,  is  yet  better, 
where  even  the  feeble  difficulties  there  are  here  almost  annihilated. 
This  route,  pursued  by  many  now  engaged  in  that"  (?.  e.,  the  fur) 
"trade,  holds  its  course  from  the  Missouri  up  the  Kansas  River  .  . 
then  falling  on  to  the  river  Platte,  thence  entirely  up  that  river  to 
its  source,  where  the  Oregon  or  Rocky  Mountains  sink  into  a  bed 
of  sand,  without  water  or  timber  for  the  space  of  eighty  miles, 
smooth  and  level." 

A  fuller  and  more  exact  description  appeared  in  the  Missouri 
Herald  in  the  autumn  of  1826,  and  was  widely  copied  throughout 
the  country,  appearing  on  page  229  of  Vol.  31  of  Niles'  Register, 
December,  1826,  as  follows :  "The  recent  expedition  of  Gen.  Ashley 
to  the  country  west  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  has  been  productive  of 
information  on  subjects  of  no  small  interest  to  the  people  of  the 
Union.  It  has  proved  that  overland  expeditions  in  large  bodies  may 
be  made  to  that  remote  region  without  the  necessity  of  transport- 
ing provisions  for  men  or  beasts.  Gen.  Ashley  left  St.  Louis  in 
March  last,  and  returned  in  September.  His  return  caravan  con- 
sisted of  upwards  of  100  horses  and  mules,  and  more  than  that 
number  of  men.  He  went  to  the  station  of  the  party  which  he  had 
left  beyond  the  mountains  when  he  came  in  a  year  ago,  and  thence 
descended  a  river  believed  to  be  the  Bonaventura,  about  150  miles 
to  the  Great  Salt  Lake.  The  return  march  to  St.  Louis  occupied 
seventy  days,  each  horse  and  mule  carrying  nearly  200  pounds  of 
beaver  fur,  the  animals  keeping  their  strength  and  flesh  on  the  grass 
which  they  found  and  without  losing  any  time  on  this  long  journey. 
The  men  also  found  an  abundance  of  food.  They  say  there  was  no 
day  on  which  they  could  not  have  subsisted  a  thousand  men,  and 
often  ten  thousand.  Buffalo  furnished  the  principal  food,  water  of 
the  best  quality  was  met  with  every  day.  The  whole  route  lay 
through  a  level  and  o])en  country,  better  for  carriages  than  any 
turnpike  road  in  the  United  States.  Wagons  and  carriages  could 
go  with  ease  as  far  as  Gen.  Ashley  went,  crossing  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains at  the  sources  of  the  Platte  and  descending  the  valley  of  the 
Bonaventura  towards  the  Pacific  Ocean." 

Then  follows  a  brief  descri])tion  of  the  Great  Salt  Lake,  after 
which  the  article  goes  on  as  follows:  "In  the  whole  expedition 
Gen.  Ashley  did  not  lose  a  man,  nor  had  any  of  those  died  whom 
he  left  behind  last  year,  many  of  whom  have  been  out  four  or  five 
years,  and  are  too  happy  in  the  freedom  of  these  wild  regions  to 
think  of  returning  to  the  comparative  thralldom  of  civilized  life. 
It  would  seem  that  no  attempt  has  been  made  to  ascertain  the  pre- 
cise latitude  and  longitude  of  the  point  at  which  Gen.  Ashley 
crossed  the  mountains.    It  is  to  be  hoped  that  this  will  not  be  neg- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  71 

lected  on  the  next  expedition.  From  all  that  we  can  learn  the  ele- 
vation is  exceedingly  small  where  the  passage  of  the  mountains  was 
effected,  so  small  as  hardly  to  affect  the  rate  of  going  of  the  caravan, 
and  forming  at  the  most  an  angle  of  three  degrees,  being  two  de- 
grees less  than  the  steepest  ascent  on  the  Cumberland  road." 

What  happened  in  the  discovery  of  routes  practicable  for  trans- 
continental wagon  roads,  and  the  development  of  the  first  of  those 
roads  in  the  next  six  years,  is  best  stated  by  W.  H.  Ashley,  Major 
Joshua  Pilcher,  and  the  Rocky  Mountain  Fur  Co.  (or  the  firm  of 
Smith,  Sublette  &  Jackson)  in  letters  which  the  National  Govern- 
ment deemed  of  so  much  importance  that  less  than  three  months 
after  the  last  of  them  was  received  by  the  Secretary  of  War,  in  re- 
sponse to  a  resolution  of  the  Senate  asking  him  to  communicate  any 
information  in  possession  of  the  Government  relative  to  the  British 
establishments  on  the  Columbia,  President  Jackson  sent  to  the 
Senate  a  very  brief  message  of  transmittal,  dated  January  24,  1831. 
January  25  it  was  referred  to  the  Committee  on  Military  Affairs, 
and  January  26  that  committee  reported  it  back  with  a  recom- 
mendation that  the  message  and  accompanying  documents  be 
printed  and  ''1,500  copies  in  addition  to  the  usual  number"  (which 
was  a  liberal  allowance  for  that  time)  "be  furnished  for  the  use 
of  the  Senate."  It  is  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  39,  21st  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  covers 
thirty-six  pages  and  is  very  interesting.  Ashley's  letter  is  dated 
Washington,  March,  1829,  and  begins:  "You  request  me  to  com- 
municate to  you,  by  letter,  my  opinion  as  it  regards  a  military  force 
best  calculated  for  the  protection  of  our  western  frontier,  the  fur 
trade  and  our  trade  and  intercourse  direct  from  Missouri  and  Ar- 
kansas to  the  Mexican  provinces,  etc.,  etc." 

He  then  gives  his  opinion  on  the  number  of  troops  needful  to 
protect  our  citizens  west  of  the  mountains,  and  on  pages  6  and  7, 
"in  compliance  with  your  request,"  he  states  his  method  of  equip- 
ping and  moving  men  through  the  Indian  country  "in  the  course  of 
my  general  excursions  to  the  Rocky  Mountains,"  and  concludes  as 
follows:  "In  this  way  I  have  marched  parties  of  men  the  whole 
way  from  St.  Louis  to  the  vicinity  of  the  Grand  Lake,  which  is  sit- 
uated about  150  miles  down  the  waters  of  the  Pacific  Ocean,  in 
seventy-eight  days.  In  the  month  of  March,  1827,  I  fitted  out  a 
party  of  sixty  men,  mounted  a  piece  of  artillery  (a  four-pounder)  on 
a  carriage  which  was  drawn  by  two  mules.  The  party  marched  to 
or  near  the  Grand  Salt  Lake,  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains,  remain- 
ing there  one  month,  stopped  on  the  way  back  fifteen  days,  and  re- 
turned to  Lexington,  in  the  western  part  of  Missouri,  in  September, 
where  the  party  was  met  with  everything  necessary  for  another  out- 
fit, and  did  return  (using  the  same  horses  and  mules)  to  the  moun- 
tains by  the  last  of  November  in  the  same  year." 


72  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

This  letter  is  addressed  at  its  close  "Gen.  A.  Macomb,  Com- 
mander in  Chief  of  the  Army  of  the  United  States,  Washington 
City,"  and  signed  "W.  H.  Ashley." 

(Cf.  also  for  accounts  of  Ashley's  expeditions  of  1826  and  1827, 
Niles'  Kegister,  p.  229,  December,  1826,  and  p.  213,  December,  1827.) 

Immediately  following  Ashley's  letter  is  a  letter  by  Major  Joshua 
Pilcher  addressed  to  Hon.  J.  H.  Eaton,  Secretary  of  War,  undated, 
but  from  its  contents  certainly  written  between  July  1,  1830,  and 
January  20,  1831. 

It  describes  his  very  extensive  and  fearless  expedition  of  explora- 
tion and  discovery  between  September,  1827,  and  June  30,  1830.  I 
regret  that  space  will  not  permit  me  to  quote  its  whole  fourteen 
pages  here,  but  part  of  it,  as  well  as  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  Fur 
Comj)any's  letter,  belongs  more  properly  to  Chapter  VII.,  on  "The 
Truth  About  the  Kelation  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  to  the 
American  Exploration,  Occupation  and  Settlement  of  Oregon." 

Pilcher  says  that  he  "engaged  in  the  Indian  trade  of  the  Upper 
Missouri  eleven  years  ago,  say  1819."  .  .  .  and  "I  determined 
in  1827  on  more  extensive  operations.  With  this  view  I  left  Council 
Bluffs  in  September  of  that  year  with  a  party  of  men,  forty-five  in 
the  whole,  and  an  outfit  of  merchandise  suited  to  the  object.  My 
route  lay  up  the  river  Platte  to  its  forks,  and  thence  up  its  north 
branch  to  its  source  in  the  Rocky  Mountains.  Here  I  had  to  make 
a  depot  of  merchandise  and  i)roperty,  which  is  done  by  burying  it 
in  the  ground,  the  Indians  having  completed  their  designs  upon  our 
horses  by  stealing  the  last  of  them.  I  had  set  out  from  Council 
Bluffs  with  104  of  these  indispensable  animals,  and  was  left  to 
make  the  transit  of  the  mountains  almost  without  any.  The  snow 
was  deep,  but  the  ascent  and  descent  easy,  being  a  depression  of  the 
mountains  to  such  a  degree  that  a  carriage  could  cross  without  the 
least  difficulty.  The  depression  was  not  only  low,  but  wide,  some- 
thing like  a  valley  through  the  mountains,  say  thirty  or  forty  miles 
wide,  the  river  Colorado  taking  its  rise  on  the  opposite  side.  I 
passed  the  winter  of  1827-28  on  the  Colorado."  .  .  .  "In  July, 
1828,"  his  partners  and  most  of  the  men  having  returned  to  St. 
Louis,  Pilcher,  "with  nine  men  commenced  a  tour  of  the  Northwest, 
with  a  view  of  exploring  the  region  of  the  Columbia  River  to  ascer- 
tain the  attractions  and  capabilities  for  trade."  .  .  .  "The  ex- 
cursion occupied  me  till  June,  1830  (a  period  of  nearly  two  years), 
w^hen  I  retui-iied  to  St.  Louis."  He  kept  along  the  west  side  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains  to  Lewis  River  and  thence  to  Clark's  River,  and 
December  1,  1828,  began  a  winter's  cam])  at  Flathead  Lake. 

"In  the  latter  part  of  the  spring"  of  1829  all  his  men  but  one 
were  at  their  own  request  discharged  to  return  to  St.  Louis  with  a 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  73 

small  party  with  whom  they  had  spent  part  of  the  winter,  and  with 
that  one  companion  he  continued  his  explorations. 

In  the  summer  of  1829,  by  invitation  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Com- 
pany trader  among  the  Flatheads,  he  accompanied  him  to  Ft.  Col- 
vile,  and  after  being  hospitably  entertained  there  for  twenty  days, 
on  September  21,  1829,  having  been  invited  to  accompany  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Company's  annual  East-bound  express,  he  set  out  up  the 
Columbia  "with  six  men  of  the  post  carrying  the  annual  export 
across  the  mountains,"  recrossed  the  Continental  Divide  in  54  de- 
grees north  latitude,  and  reached  the  Red  River  Settlement  March 
24,  1830,  and  after  three  days'  hospitable  entertainment  there,  he 
struck  off  on  snowshoes  to  the  Mandan  Indian  villages  on  the  Upper 
Missouri,  and  from  there  finally  returned  to  St.  Louis  June  30, 
1830. 

On  p.  19,  writing  of  Passes  through  the  Mountains,  he  says: 
"The  most  erroneous  ideas  prevail  upon  this  head.  The  Rocky 
Mountains  are  deemed  by  many  to  be  impassable,  and  to  present 
the  barrier  which  will  arrest  the  westward  march  of  the  American 
population.  The  man  must  know  but  little  of  the  American  people 
who  supposes  they  can  be  stopped  by  anything  in  the  shape  of  moun- 
tains, deserts,  seas  or  rivers,  and  he  can  know  nothing  at  all  of  the 
mountains  in  question  to  suppose  that  they  are  impassable." 

He  then  says  that  he  has  known  these  mountains  for  three  years 
and  has  crossed  them  from  42  degrees  to  54  degrees,  and  continues : 
•'I  say  then,  that  nothing  is  more  easily  passed  than  these  moun- 
tains." 

"Wagons  and  carriages  may  cross  them  (i.  e.,  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains) in  a  state  of  nature  without  difficulty,  and  with  little  delay 
on  the  day's  journey.  Some  parts  are  very  high,  but  the  gradual 
rise  of  the  country  in  the  vast  slope  from  the  Mississippi  to  the  foot 
of  the  mountains  makes  a  considerable  elevation  without  percept- 
ible increase,  and  then  the  gaps  or  depressions  let  you  through  al- 
most upon  a  level. 

"This  is  particularly  the  case  opposite  the  head  of  the  Platte," 
(i.  e.,  the  South  Pass)  "where  I  crossed  in  1827,  and  which  has  al- 
ready been  described.  I  have  crossed  here  often  and  always  without 
delay  or  difficulty.  It  is,  in  fact,  one  of  the  best  passes,  and  presents 
the  best  overland  route  from  the  valleys  of  the  Mississippi  to  the 
mouth  of  the  Columbia  that  would  follow  the  line  of  the  Platte  and 
Lewis  Rivers  .  .  .  These  observations  I  address  to  you,  sir,  as 
an  organ  of  communication  with  the  President.  As  an  American 
citizen  anxious  for  the  prosperity  of  my  country,  I  deem  it  my  duty 
to  communicate  to  the  Government  the  observations  which  I  have 
made  upon  the  state  of  things  west  of  the  Rocky  Mountains." 

The  letter  of  Smith,  Sublette  and  Jackson,  doing  business  as  the 


74  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

Kocky  Mountain  Fur  Co.,  is  dated  St.  Louis,  October  29,  1830,  and 
addressed  to  Hon.  J.  H.  Eaton,  Secretary  of  War.  It  begins  as  fol- 
lows: ''The  business  of  taking  furs  from  the  United  States  Terri- 
tories beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains  has  since  been  continued  by 
Jedediah  S.  Smith,  David  E.  Jackson  and  W.  L.  Sublette,  under  the 
firm  name  of  Smith,  Sublette  and  Jackson. 

''They  commenced  business  in  1826,  and  have  since  continued  it; 
and  have  made  observations  and  gained  information  which  they 
think  it  important  to  communicate  to  the  Government.  The  num- 
ber of  men  they  have  employed  has  usually  been  from  80  to  100, 
and  with  these  divided  into  parties  they  have  traversed  every  part 
of  the  country  west  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  from  the  peninsula  of 
California  to  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  River.  Pack  horses  or 
rather  mules  were  at  first  used;  but  in  the  beginning  of  the  present 
year  it  was  determined  to  try  wagons;  and  in  the  month  of  April 
last,  on  the  tenth  day  of  the  month,  a  caravan  of  ten  wagons  drawn 
by  five  mules  each,  and  two  dearborns  drawn  by  one  mule  each,  set 
out  from  St.  Louis.  There  were  eighty-one  men  in  the  party,  all 
mounted  on  mules.  Our  route  was  nearly  due  west  to  the  western 
limits  of  the  State  of  Missouri,  and  thence  along  the  Santa  Fe  trail 
about  forty  miles,  from  which  the  course  was  some  degrees  north  of 
west,  across  the  waters  of  the  Kansas,  and  up  the  great  Platte  River 
to  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  to  the  head  of  Wind  River,  where  it 
issues  from  the  mountains.  This  took  us  until  the  10th  of  July, 
and  w^as  as  far  as  we  wished  to  go  with  the  wagons,  as  the  furs  to 
be  brought  in  were  to  be  collected  at  this  place,  which  is,  or  was 
this  year,  the  great  rendezvous  of  the  persons  engaged  in  that 
business. 

"Here  the  wagons  could  easily  have  crossed  the  mountains,  it 
being  what  is  called  the  Southern  Pass,  had  it  been  desirable  for 
them  to  do  so,  which  it  was  not  for  the  reasons  stated.  For  our 
support,  at  leaving  the  Missouri  settlements,  until  we  should  get 
into  the  buffalo  country,  we  drove  twelve  head  of  cattle,  besides  a. 
milch  cow. 

"Eight  of  these  only  being  required  for  use  before  we  got  to  the 
buffaloes,  the  others  went  on  to  the  head  of  Wind  River.  We  began 
to  fall  in  with  buffaloes  on  the  Platte,  about  350  miles  from  the 
white  settlements,  and  from  that  time  lived  on  buffaloes,  the  quan- 
tity being  infinitely  beyond  what  we  needed.  On  the  4th  of  August, 
the  wagons  being  in  the  mean  time  loaded  with  the  furs  which  had 
been  previously  taken,  we  set  out  on  our  return  to  St.  Louis. 

"All  the  high  points  of  the  mountains  then  in  view  were  white 
with  snow;  but  the  passes  and  valleys,  and  all  the  level  country 
were  green  with  grass.  Our  route  back  was  over  the  same  ground 
nearly  as  in  going  out,  and  we  arrived  in  St.  Louis  on  the  10th  of 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  75 

October,  bringing  back  the  ten  wagons,  four  of  the  oxen  and  the 
milch  cow,  as  we  did  not  need  them  for  provisions.  Our  men  were 
all  healthy  during  the  whole  time ;  we  suffered  nothing  from  Indians 
and  had  no  accident  but  the  death  of  one  man,  being  buried  under 
a  bank  of  earth  that  fell  in  upon  him,  and  another  crippled  at  the 
same  time.  Of  the  mules  we  lost  but  one  by  fatigue,  and  two  horses 
stolen  by  the  Kansas  Indians,  the  grass  being  along  the  whole  route 
going  and  coming  sufficient  for  the  support  of  the  horses  and  mules. 
The  usual  weight  in  the  wagons  was  about  1,800  pounds. 

"'The  usual  progress  of  the  wagons  was  from  fifteen  to  twenty 
miles  per  day. 

''The  country  being  almost  all  open,  level  and  prairie,  the  chief 
obstructions  were  ravines  and  creeks,  the  banks  of  which  required 
cutting  down,  and  for  this  purpose  a  few  pioneers  were  generally 
kept  in  advance  of  the  caravan.  This  is  the  first  time  that  wagons 
ever  went  to  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  the  ease  and  safety  with 
which  it  was  done  prove  the  facility  of  communicating  overland 
with  the  Pacific  Ocean.  The  route  from  the  Southern  Pass,  where 
the  wagons  stopped,  to  the  Great  Falls  of  the  Columbia,  being  easier 
and  better  than  on  this  side  of  the  mountains,  with  grass  enough 
for  the  horses  and  mules;  but  a  scarcity  of  game  for  the  support 
of  the  men." 

This  it  will  be  remembered  was  six  years  before  Whitman  went 
to  Oregon  with  his  wagon ;  four  years  before  any  one  went  as  a 
missionary  to  the  Oregon  Indians  and  three  years  before  the  ''high- 
wrought  and  incorrect"  account  of  the  visit  of  the  Flatheads  to  St. 
Louis  in  the  Christian  Advocate  and  Z ion's  Herald  started  the  ex- 
citement about  sending  missionaries  to  Oregon.  These  letters  of 
Pilcher  and  the  Rocky  Mountain  Fur  Co.  were  widely  read  in  Docu- 
ment 39,  and  repeatedly  quoted  in  newspaper  and  magazine  articles, 
and,  as  we  shall  see,  in  later  Congressional  reports. 

In  1832  (the  very  next  year  after  the  publication  of  this  Senate 
Document  No.  39),  Capt.  Bonneville  of  the  United  States  Army, 
having  obtained  a  furlough  for  his  famous  fur  trading  expedition, 
by  "offering  to  combine  public  utility  with  his  private  projects,  and 
to  collect  statistical  information  for  the  War  Department  concern- 
ing the  wild  country  and  tribes  he  might  visit"  (Cf.  Gen.  Macomb's 
Instructions  to  Capt.  Bonneville,  in  Appendix  to  Irving's  "Bonne- 
ville"), proceeded  to  demonstrate  the  correctness  of  Smith,  Sublette 
and  Jackson's  prediction  by  driving  twenty  loaded  wagons  across 
the  Rocky  Mountains  through  the  South  Pass  and  into  the  Oregon 
Territory  as  far  as  the  fur  traders'  rendezvous  for  that  year,  which 
was  in  Green  River  Valley,  and  in  1837  Irving  published  his  account 
of  "Bonneville's  Adventures,"  which  was  immediately  republished 
in  England. 


76  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

Whitman  knew  about  these  wagons  of  Bonneville  before  he 
started  with  his  two  wagons  in  1836,  and  also  that  the  route  pre- 
sented no  particular  difficulties,  for  in  a  sixteen  page  letter  which 
he  wrote  in  the  form  of  a  journal  of  his  trip  with  Rev.  Samuel  Par- 
ker to  the  rendezvous  on  Green  River,  just  west  of  the  South  Pass 
(from  which  nothing  has  been  published  heretofore),  he  wrote,  on 
page  13,  under  date  of  October  20,  1835:  "If  Col.  Dodge  should  go 
to  the  Pacific  and  transport  cannon  as  he  did  last  year,  we  could 
cross  the  mountains  with  a  wagon." 

"There  were  twenty  wagons  at  one  time  from  St.  Louis  at  the 
place  where  the  company  rendezvoused  last  summer. 

"There  is  no  obstruction  from  timber  except  in  a  few  instances 
of  willow  upon  the  streams,  which  is  trifling."  No  advocate  of  the 
Whitman  Legend  has  ever  alluded  to  this  letter,  or  given  any  inti- 
mation that  Whitman  had  ever  heard  of  Bonneville's  wagons. 

I  have  been  unable  to  learn  whether  or  not  the  fur  traders* 
annual  caravans  took  any  wagons  in  1833  and  1834,  but  as  Ft. 
Laramie  (589  miles  from  Independence,  Mo.,  and  272  miles  east 
of  the  summit  of  the  South  Pass)  was  founded  in  1834,  it  is  alto- 
gether probable  that  wagons  were  taken  that  far. 

In  1835  the  annual  caravan  of  the  American  Fur  Co.,  with 
which  Rev.  S.  Parker  and  Dr.  Whitman  went  as  far  as  Green  River, 
took  six  wagons  as  far  as  Ft.  Laramie,  where  they  left  them,  not  on 
account  of  any  fear  of  being  unable  to  take  them  across  the  Main 
Range  into  Oregon,  but  for  the  very  obvious  reason  that  now  hav- 
ing a  permanent  fort,  where  Indians  and  white  trappers  could  come 
to  trade  all  the  year,  a  very  large  part  of  their  goods  for  that  trade 
need  not  be  transported  any  farther  than  Ft.  Laramie.  (Cf.  for 
these  wagons,  and  the  leaving  of  them.  Rev.  S.  Parker's  "Journal 
of  an  Exploring  Tour  Beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains,"  pp.  52  and 
72.) 

This  brings  us  to  1836  and  Whitman's  wagon,  and  that  the  reader 
may  know  all  the  facts  about  his  wagon,  I  will  quote  all  of  the 
contemporaneous  evidence  known  to  exist  that  says  anything  about 
his  wagon  (which  is  something  not  to  be  found  in  any  book  advo- 
cating the  Whitman  Legend). 

As  both  Mrs.  Whitman  and  Mrs.  Spalding  kept  diaries  of  this 
journey,  and  both  Dr.  Whitman  and  Mr.  Spalding  wrote  letters  in 
which  the  facts  about  the  wagon  and  its  fate  are  explicitly  stated, 
we  have  abundance  of  contemporaneous  evidence  to  enable  us  to 
know  the  truth  about  this  innocent  and  unimportant  vehicle,  and 
those  who  have  accepted  as  trustworthy  authorities  Gray's  History 
and  Spalding's  Pamphlet,  and  Barrows,  Nixon,  Craighead,  Mowry, 
Rev.  M.  Fells,  Prof.  Lyman,  President  Penrose,  D.  H.  Montgomery's 
Leading  Facts  (?)  in  American  History,  Prof.  H.  W.  Parker,  Geo. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  77 

Ludington  Weed,  and  all  the  other  inventors  or  endorsers  of  the 
fictions  about  Whitman's  wagon,  will  be  greatly  surprised  to  read 
what  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Whitman  and  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Spalding  wrote 
while  on  the  journey  and  immediately  after  its  conclusion,  and  no 
less  so  what  they  did  not  write  in  the  next  six  years. 

May  5,  1836,  Whitman  wrote  to  D.  Greene,  secretary,  from  "Can- 
tonment Leavenworth":  "We  have  one  wagon  for  ladies  and  one 
for  baggage." 

May  20,  1836,  H.  H.  Spalding  wrote  from  Otoe  Agency  to  D. 
Greene,  secretary,  as  follows :  "We  have  two  hired  men,  one  Nez 
Perce,  a  faithful  and  valuable  young  man,  besides  Richard  and 
John,  ten  of  us  in  all.  Two  wagons,  thirteen  horses,  six  mules, 
seventeen  head  of  cattle,  including  calves.  We  think  it  best  to  take 
the  wagons  to  the  Black  Hills  with  horses,  then  our  packing  animals 
will  be  packed  for  the  remainder  of  the  journey  with  sound  backs." 
"We  have  now  a  very  limited  supply  of  everything.  We  find  that 
we  must  leave  many  things  we  consider  almost  indispensable.  My 
classical  and  theological  books  will  nearly  all  be  left.  We  can 
take  almost  nothing  in  the  line  of  mechanical  tools  and  farming 
utensils,  but  very  little  clothing,  no  seeds  except  a  few  garden 
seeds." 

Mrs.  Spalding's  diary  (among  Mss.  of  Oregon  Historical  So- 
ciety) under  date  of  Liberty,  Mo.,  April  27,  1836,  after  stating  that 
Messrs.  Spalding  and  Gray,  and  the  two  Nez  Perces  boys,  and  one 
young  man  to  assist  them,  had  started  that  day  by  land  from  Lib- 
erty for  Council  Bluffs,  continues:  "It  was  necessary  for  the  gen- 
tlemen to  make  the  route  by  land  on  account  of  the  wagons,  horses 
and  cattle  purchased  at  this  place." 

Mr.  Spalding  wrote  to  D.  Greene,  secretary,  from  Rendezvous, 
July  9,  1836,  as  follows:  "We  have  got  our  wagon  to  this  place 
without  much  difficulty,  and  shall  probably  take  it  through." 

A  postscript  on  margin  of  page  1  says:  "Mr.  McLeod,  a  di- 
rector of  the  Fur  Company,  arrived  in  camp  today,  12th  of  July, 
from  Walla  Walla,  bringing  letter  from  Mr.  Parker.  Arrangements 
are  made  for  us  to  return  in  his  company.  It  seems  the  most 
marked  Providence  in  our  favor  of  any  we  have  yet  experienced. 
Now  all  anxieties  respecting  a  long  and  dangerous  route  with  the 
Indians  cease.  We  have  now  a  safe  convoy  that  will  conduct  us 
immediately  to  the  spot.  We  find  Mr.  McLeod  very  friendly,  and 
well  disposed  toward  our  object.  He  says  he  will  render  us  any 
assistance  in  his  power." 

Mrs.  Whitman's  diary  (in  the  Transcript  Oregon  Pioneer  Asso- 
ciation, 1891,  on  page  41)  says:  "We  attempted  to  reach  Loup 
Fork  that  night  (i  e.,  Tuesday,  May  14,  1836,)  "and  part  of  us  suc- 
ceeded.   Those  in  the  wagons  drove  there  by  11  o'clock,  but  it  was 


78  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

too  much  for  the  cattle."  .  .  .  (P.  42)  The  next  morning  "the 
Fur  Company  was  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  river,  which  we 
forded  and  without  unloading  our  wagons  much."  .  .  .  "Since 
we  came  up  with  the  camp,  I  rode  in  the  wagons  most  of  the  way 
to  the  Black  Hills.  It  is  astonishing  how  well  we  get  along  with 
our  wagons  where  there  are  no  roads.  I  think  I  may  say  it  is  easier 
traveling  here  than  on  any  turnpike  in  the  States." 

(P.  43)  Under  date  of  July  14,  1836,  she  wrote:  "We  are  now 
at  the  Rocky  Mountains,  at  the  encampment  of  Messrs.  McLeod  and 
McKay,  expecting  to  leave  on  Monday  morning  for  Walla  Walla. 
It  seems  a  special  favor  that  that  company  has  come  to  Rendezvous 
this  season ;  for  otherwise  we  would  have  had  to  have  gone  with  the 
Indians  a  difficult  route,  and  so  slow  that  we  should  have  been 
late  at  Walla  Walla,  and  not  have  had  the  time  we  wanted  to  make 
preparations  for  winter." 

Mrs.  Spalding's  diary  under  date  of  June  15,  1836,  at  Ft.  Wil- 
liam, (i.  €.,  Ft.  Laramie),  says:  "We  are  camped  near  the  fort  and 
shall  probably  remain  here  several  days,  as  the  company"  (i  e., 
the  American  Fur  Co.)  "leave  their  wagons  at  this  post,  and  make 
arrangements  to  transport  their  goods  the  remainder  of  the  journey 
on  mules." 

Returning  again  to  Mrs.  Whitman's  diary  (Trans.  O.  P.  A.  1891, 
p.  44)  :  "July  25,  1836.  Husband  has  had  a  tedious  time  with  the 
wagon  today.  It  got  stuck  in  the  creek  this  morning  when  cross- 
ing, and  he  was  obliged  to  wade  considerably  in  getting  it  out. 
After  that,  in  going  between  the  mountains,  on  the  side  of  one  so 
steep  that  it  was  difficult  for  horses  to  pass,  the  wagon  upset  twice; 
did  not  wonder  at  this  at  all  it  was  a  greater  wonder  that  it  was 
not  turning  somersaults  continually.  It  is  not  very  grateful  to  my 
feelings  to  see  him  wearing  out  with  such  excessive  fatigue,  as  I 
am  obliged  to.  He  is  not  as  fleshy  as  he  was  last  winter.  All  the 
most  difficult  part  of  the  way  he  has  walked,  in  laborious  attempts 
to  take  the  wagon." 

(P.  45)  "July  28.  One  of  the  axle-trees  of  the  wagon  broke 
today;  was  a  little  rejoiced,  for  we  were  in  hopes  they  would  leave 
it,  and  have  no  more  trouble  with  it.  Our  rejoicing  was  in  vain, 
for  they  are  making  a  cart  of  the  back  wheels  this  afternoon  and 
lashing  the  fore  wheels  to  it — intending  to  take  it  through  in  some 
shape  or  other.  They  are  so  resolute  and  untiring  in  their  efforts 
they  will  probably  succeed." 

This,  it  will  be  noticed,  was  not  at  Ft.  Hall  (where  all  the  ad- 
vocates of  the  Whitman  Legend  represent  Whitman  as  reducing  his 
wagon  to  a  cart  on  account  of  the  opposition  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  to  its  going  any  farther),  but  six  days'  journey  east  of  Ft.  Hall, 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  79 

at  which  place,  according  to  Mrs.  Spalding's  diary,  they  arrived  a 
little  after  noon  of  August  3. 

(P.  49)  Friday,  August  12,  Mrs.  Whitman's  diary  says:  "Dear 
Harriet,  the  little  trunk  you  gave  me  has  come  with  me  so  far,  and 
now  I  must  leave  it  here  alone  .  .  .  The  hills  are  so  steep  and 
rocky  that  husband  thought  it  best  to  lighten  the  wagon  as  much 
as  possible,  and  take  nothing  but  the  wheels,  leaving  the  box"  {i.  e., 
the  rude  box  he  made  out  of  the  wagon  body  on  July  28,  when  the 
breaking  of  the  axle  compelled  him  to  make  his  wagon  into  a  cart), 
"with  my  trunk." 

(P.  50)  ''Saturday,  August  13.  We  have  come  fifteen  miles 
and  have  had  the  worst  route  in  all  the  journey  for  the  cart.  We 
might  have  had  a  better  one  but  for  being  misled  by  some  of  the 
company  who  started  out  before  the  leaders.  It  was  2  o'clock  be- 
fore we  came  into  camp."  .  .  .  Describing  the  crossing  of  Snake 
River:  "Husband  had  considerable  difficulty  in  crossing  the  cart. 
Both  cart  and  mules  were  turned  upside  down  in  the  river,  and  en- 
tangled in  the  harness.  The  mules  would  have  been  drowned  but 
for  a  desperate  struggle  to  get  them  ashore.  Then  after  putting 
two  of  the  strongest  horses  before  the  cart,  and  two  men  swim- 
ming behind  to  steady  it,  they  succeeded  in  getting  it  across." 

(P.  52)  August  22.  "As  for  the  wagon,  it  is  left  at  the  fort, 
and  I  have  nothing  to  say  about  crossing  it  at  this  time.  Five  of 
our  cattle  were  left  there  also,  to  be  exchanged  for  others  at  Walla 
Walla.  Perhaps  you  will  wonder  why  we  have  left  the  wagon, 
having  taken  it  so  nearly  through.  Our  animals  were  failing,  and 
the  route  in  crossing  the  Blue  Mountains  is  said  to  be  impassable 
for  it.  We  have  the  prospect  of  obtaining  one  in  exchange  at  Van- 
couver, If  we  do  not  we  shall  send  for  it,  when  we  have  been  to 
so  much  labor  in  getting  it  thus  far.  It  is  a  useful  article  in  the 
country." 

Turning  now  to  Whitman's  own  letters,  we  find  every  advocate 
of  the  Whitman  Legend  has  failed  not  only  to  quote  from,  but  in 
any  way  to  allude  to,  the  existence  of  the  following  two,  written 
to  Rev.  D.  Greene,  secretary:  "Encampment  of  Messrs.  McCloud 
and  McCay"  (should  be  McLeod  and  McKay,  W.  I.  M.),  "near 
Green  River,  ten  miles  from  Rendezvous,  July  16,  1836.  Our  great- 
est difficulty  was  to  bring  our  cattle  up  to  the  forced  march  of  the 
company  {i.  e.,  the  American  Fur  Co.  or  Fitzpatrick  and  Dripps), 
"and  with  our  wagon,  one  of  which  we  have  brought  to  this  place, 
and  expect  to  take  it  through  the  whole  journey.  Most  of  the  diffi- 
culty with  the  wagon  originated  from  the  forced  marches  manner 
of  traveling,  the  company  having  one  cart  only  from  Ft.  William  to 
Rendezvous.  When  we  first  met  the  Indians  we  did  not  know  of 
any  other  company  with  whom  we  could  go,  and  intended  to  accom- 


80  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

modate  ourselves  to  their  route,  although  we  might  have  to  go  out 
of  our  way  to  accommodate  them  for  buffalo,  and  should  be  de- 
tained for  them  to  kill  and  dry  their  winter's  supply  of  meat.  But 
by  the  arrival  of  Messrs.  McCloud  and  McCay  we  are  furnished 
with  a  safe  and  direct  escort  to  Walla  Walla,  and  have  availed  our- 
selves of  their  company  and  })rotection.  We  received  the  most 
flattering  encouragement  from  these  gentlemen,  one  of  whom,  Mr. 
McCloud,  is  a  partner  in  the  Northwest  Fur  Co."  (should  be  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.,  W.  I.  M.)  ''that  we  should  have  every  facility  in  our 
journey,  and  all  necessary  supplies  of  goods,  provisions,  etc.,  at 
Walla  Walla." 

September  15,  1836,  W^hitman  wrote  from  Ft.  Walla  Walla  .  . 
"We  have  received  the  kindest  hospitality  from  those  with  whom 
we  have  traveled,  but  more  especially  since  we  joined  the  camp  of 
Messrs.  McLeod  and  McKay.  For  most  of  the  way  that  we  trav- 
eled with  them  we  were  in  a  country  where  there  is  but  little  game, 
yet  by  their  great  exertion  they  often  obtained  some,  and  when- 
ever they  were  so  fortunate  we  were  sure  to  share  largely  with 
them.  We  brought  our  wagon  and  all  our  cattle  to  Snake  Fort" 
(Ft.  Boise),  "about  250  miles  above  this  post  on  Lewis  (or,  as 
called  here.  Snake)  River.  The  wagon  we  left  subject  to  future 
order." 

September  20,  1836,  H.  H.  Spalding  wrote  a  very  long  letter  to 
D.  Greene,  secretary,  from  Ft.  Vancouver,  from  which  copious  ex- 
tracts were  printed  in  the  Missouri  Herald  for  October,  1837,  but 
every  advocate  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  has  always 
carefully  refrained  from  quoting  from  it  or  even  mentioning  it. 

In  it  he  wrote:  "We  drove  a  wagon  to  Snake  Fort,  and  could 
have  driven  it  through  but  for  the  fatigue  of  our  animals;  expect 
to  get  it  at  some  future  time."  From  these  dates,  September  15, 
1836,  for  Whitman,  and  September  20,  1836,  for  Spalding,  the  word 
wagon  does  not  occur  again,  nor  one  word  about  a  wagon  road  in 
all  the  voluminous  correspondence  of  Whitman,  Spalding  and  Mrs. 
Whitman,  till  after  Whitman  had  returned  from  Boston  to  Mis- 
souri, in  May,  1843,  except  that  Mrs.  Whitman,  in  a  letter  to  her 
husband  begun  October  4,  and  finished  October  17,  1842,  describ- 
ing the  kindness  of  McKinlay,  the  Hudson's  Bay  agent  in  command 
of  Ft.  Walla  Walla  (in  whose  charge  her  husband  left  her  when 
he  returned  to  the  States),  in  taking  her  from  the  mission  station 
to  W\illa  Walla  on  October  11,  1842,  wrote:  "I  am  now  at  Walla 
Walla — came  here  yesterday;  was  too  unwell  to  undertake  the 
journey,  but  could  not  refuse,  as  Mr.  McKinlay  had  come  on  pur- 
pose to  take  me.  He  came  in  the  wagon,  and  brought  the  trundle 
bed,  and  I  laid  down  most  of  the  way." 

This  failure  to  even  mention  wagon  or  wagon  road  for  more 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  81 

than  six  years  after  their  arrival  in  Oregon  shows  how  intense  was 
their  interest  in  the  ''desperate,"  or  "patriotic,"  or  "heroic,"  or 
^'resolute"  "attempt"  to  "open  up  a  passage  on  wheels  to  Oregon!" 
(Cf.  Trans.  Oregon  Pioneer  Association,  1891,  p.  166,  for  this  letter 
of  Mrs.  Whitman.) 

There  is  not  in  all  the  voluminous  correspondence,  and  the  frag- 
ments of  journals  of  these  missionaries,  not  only  during  this  jour- 
ney, but  subsequently  during  the  whole  continuance  of  the  mission, 
and  even  after  its  destruction  on  account  of  the  Whitman  massacre, 
during  all  the  years  to  the  invention  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon 
Story,  a  single  sentence  that  gives  any  intimation  that  Whitman 
in  trying  to  get  his  wagon  through  to  Ft.  Hall ;  or  the  rude  cart  to 
which  it  was  reduced  by  the  breaking  of  the  axle  six  days'  journey 
east  of  Ft.  Hall,  and  finally  the  wheels  and  axle  only  through  to 
Ft.  Boise,  was  influenced  by  any  greater  or  loftier  motive  than  that 
stated  by  Mrs.  Whitman  above,  viz:  "It  is  a  useful  article  in  the 
country."  Nor  did  Whitman  in  all  the  extravagant  and  unwar- 
ranted claims  he  made  of  service  to  the  Government  in  letters  after 
his  return  to  Oregon,  in  September,  1843,  down  to  his  death  (Cf. 
Chapter  VII.,  Part  2  infra)  ever  write  one  word  about  his  driving 
this  wagon  and  its  reduction  to  a  cart  and  finally  to  a  pair  of 
wheels  driven  to  and  left  at  Ft.  Boise  "on  account  of  the  fatigue 
of  the  animals."  The  evidence  in  the  diaries  of  Mrs.  Whitman  and 
Mrs.  Spalding  and  the  letters  of  Dr.  Whitman  and  Mr.  Spalding  is 
absolutely  irrefutable  that  from  the  time  McLeod  and  McKay  in- 
vited them  to  join  their  camp  on  July  9,  1836,  at  Green  River,  these 
Hudson's  Bay  Company's  oflQcials  treated  them  with  the  greatest 
possible  kindness,  nor  is  there  a  single  intimation  in  any  of  this 
contemporaneous  evidence  that  there  was  at  any  time  or  place  the 
least  objection  made  by  any  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  oflScer  or  employe 
to  Whitman's  attempt  to  drive  his  wagon  or  cart  or  pair  of  wheels 
through  to  the  Columbia. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  none  of  this  party  of  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.  ofiicers  and  men  had  the  least  acquaintance  with  any  one 
of  this  party  of  American  missionaries,  that  there  were  no  letters 
of  introduction  to  them,  that  they  were  not  under  the  least  con- 
ceivable special  obligation — political,  religious,  fraternal,  or  finan- 
cial— to  do  anything  whatever  to  help  these  missionaries  to  get  over 
the  longest  and  most  dreaded  part  of  their  journey,  and  that  they 
were  traveling  with  saddle  and  pack  animals,  so  that  (as  all  of  us 
well  know  who  have  had  experience — as  the  writer  repeatedly  has — ■ 
with  a  mixed  cavalcade  of  saddle  and  pack  animals  and  wagons)  to 
undertake  to  convoy  a  party  with  a  wagon,  even  over  a  region 
where  there  was  a  plainly  marked  road,  would  inevitably  mean 
some  trouble  and  delay  to    them,  and  much    more    over  a  region 


82  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

where  no  road  had  been  even  located,  and  where,  consequently 
(though  the  route  was  easily  practicable  for  a  wagon  road),  there 
must  necessarily  be  a  good  deal  of  time  consumed  in  determining 
where,  and  for  how  long  distances,  it  was  necessary  to  depart  from 
the  saddle  trail  to  find  a  route  over  which  a  wagon  could  be  driven. 

They  would  thei*efore  have  been  perfectly  justified  had  they  said 
to  the  missionary  i)arty  at  Green  Kiver:  "We  shall  be  glad  to 
have  you  travel  with  our  party,  if  you  will  leave  the  wagon  here, 
since  it  must  be  no  small  delay  to  our  movements  to  have  it  taken 
further," 

And  had  they  said  this  it  would  not  have  been  the  slightest  evi- 
dence of  any  ''fear  of,"  or  any  "antagonism  to,"  the  development 
of  the  wagon  road  further  into  Oregon. 

There  is  not  in  Mrs.  Whitman's  nor  in  Mrs.  Spalding's  diaries 
nor  in  any  of  the  contemporaneous  letters  of  the  Spaldings,  Whit- 
man's and  Mr.  W.  H.  Gray  the  least  intimation  that  at  any  point 
on  ihe  journey  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  people  made  the  least 
objection  to  the  wagon,  nor  in  any  way  opposed  the  effort  to  take  it 
through,  but  the  opposition  was  chiefly  on  the  part  of  Mrs.  Whit- 
man, who,  like  many  another  bride,  thought  her  husband  was  work- 
ing too  hard,  and  also  on  that  of  others  of  the  missionary  party, 
who  evidently  thought  "the  game  not  worth  the  candle." 

Beyond  Boise  the  fragments  of  Whitman's  wagon  never  went, 
though  why  Whitman  should  have  so  completely  lost  all  interest 
in  the  subject  of  a  wagon  road  for  six  and  a  half  years  after  he 
left  it  there,  as  not  only  not  to  have  sent  for  it,  but  never  again  to 
have  written  the  words  wagon  or  wagon  road  in  any  of  his  letters 
from  September  1.5,  1836,  to  May  28,  1843,  is  an  utterly  unsolvable 
mystery.  Various  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Legend  have  asserted 
that  Whitman's  old  wagon  subsequently  went  through  to  the  Wil- 
lamette or  to  Walla  Walla,  but  no  one  of  them  has  produced  any 
proof  of  it. 

Gray  in  an  article  in  the  Oregonian,  February  1,  1885,  reprinted 
in  the  "Whitman  Controversy"  (pamphlet),  Portland,  1885  (p.  29), 
declares  that  he  saw  Whitman's  wagon  at  Boise  in  1838,  as  Farn- 
ham  did  (in  1839),  but  even  he  dares  not  affirm  that  it  was  ever 
taken  beyond  there,  and  though  he  says  (p.  31),  "The  wagon  was 
not  abandoned,  but  left  for  Gray  to  bring  through  at  some  future 
time,"  he  vouchsafes  no  information  as  to  why  he  never  brought  it 
through.  He  speaks  of  it  as  a  wagon  all  through  this  article, 
though  he  well  knew  it  was  but  "the  thills,  one  axle,  and  a  pair  of 
wheels." 

In  1837,  so  far  as  appears,  no  wagons  crossed  the  Continental 
Divide,  nor  in  1838,  though,  as  we  have  already  seen.  Gray  claims 
to  have  been  telling  audiences  in  the  States  in  the  winter  of  1837-8 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  83 

that  "Whitman's  wagon  could  have  been  taken  through  to  the  Wil- 
lamette" (Cf.  Gray's  History  of  Oregon,  p.  177),  and  so  far  was  it 
from  being  true  that  the  1838  reinforcement  to  the  American  Board 
Mission  had,  as  Barrows  says,  no  wagon,  "because  they  had  acted 
on  the  already  well-established  impression  in  the  East  that  car- 
riages could  not  travel  to  Oregon"  (Cf.  Barrows'  Oregon,  p.  147)  ; 
that  they  had  acted  on  the  precisely  opposite  belief,  even  then  so 
generally  diffused  in  the  States,  that  wagons  could  go  to  Oregon; 
that  Dr.  Weed — the  agent  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  in  Cincinnati — had 
sent  a  wagon  to  the  frontier  for  them,  which,  not  being  suitable  for 
their  use,  they  had  traded  for  another,  and  that  they  traded  that 
one  to  Capt.  Fontenelle,  at  Ft.  Laramie,  631  miles  east  of  Ft.  Hall, 
when  they  could  take  it  no  farther  "for  want  of  horses." 

On  this  point  we  have  the  following  strictly  contemporaneous 
evidence:  (1)  Mr.  W.  H,  Gray  wrote  to  D.  Greene,  secretary,  a  let- 
ter covering  four  pages  closely  written  foolscap,  dated  "Rendezvous 
on  Wind  River,  Rocky  Mountains,  July  (no  day),  1838."  It  is  al- 
most entirely  taken  up  with  an  account  of  the  expenses  of  the  1838 
reinforcement. 

On  page  2,  after  explaining  that  they  had  been  compelled  before 
starting  from  the  Missouri  frontier  to  dispose  of  a  wagon  in  trade 
for  a  mule  at  a  loss  of  |45,  because  it  was  old  and  not  adapted  to 
the  trip,  he  says:  "The  wagon  we  purchased  to  supply  the  place 
of  the  one  sent  by  Dr.  Weed"  (which  was  the  old  one  before  re- 
ferred to),  "we  have  exchanged  for  a  horse  with  Capt.  Fontenelle, 
who  kindly  exchanged  with  us  when  we  could  bring  it  no  further 
for  want  of  horses." 

(2)  Mrs.  C.  Eells  kept  a  journal  of  this  trip,  which  was  pub- 
lished in  Trans.  Oregon  Pioneer  Association,  1889,  pp.  54-89,  and 
mentions  their  wagon  repeatedly  (pp.  63,  66,  67),  and  (p.  73),  un- 
der date  of  May  31,  1838,  at  Ft.  William  (or  Laramie)  she  wrote: 
"Give  the  wagon  to  Capts.  Drips  and  Fontenelle." 

Thos.  J.  Farnham,  ostensibly  a  private  traveler  and  explorer, 
but  really  in  the  employ  of  the  National  Government  (Cf.  Con- 
gressional Globe,  27th  Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  Appendix,  p.  229),  in  1839 
led  out  a  small  migration  to  Oregon.  He  was  described  by  an 
Englishman  who  was  a  fellow  passenger  on  the  Pacific  with  him 
as  a  "flamboyantly  patriotic  American."  September  13,  1839,  he 
reached  Ft.  Boise  (Travels,  p.  141),  and  (p.  142)  he  says:  "The 
14th  and  15th  were  spent  very  pleasantly  with  this  gentleman" 
(1  e.,  Mr.  Payette)  .  .  .  "Among  the  curiosities  of  this  estab- 
lishment were  the  fore  wheels,  axle-tree  and  thills  of  a  one-horse 
wagon,  said  to  have  been  run  by  the  American  missionaries  from 
the  State  of  Connecticut  through  the  mountains  thus  far  towards 
the  mouth  of  the  Columbia.    It  was  left  here  under  the  belief  that 


84  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

it  could  not  be  taken  through  the  lilue  Mountains.  But  fortunately 
for  the  next  that  shall  attempt  to  cross  the  continent,  a  safe  and 
easy  passage  has  lately  been  discovered  by  which  vehicles  of  the 
kind  may  be  drawn  through  to  ^Yalla  Walla." 

Farnham  returned  to  the  States  via  the  Sandwich  Islands,  and 
at  Poughkeepsie,  N.  Y.,  in  1841,  published  the  first  edition  of  his 
"Travels  on  the  Great  Western  Prairies,  the  Anahuac  and  Rocky 
Mountains,  and  in  the  Oregon  Territory."  It  was  so  popular  that 
in  1843  two  more  editions  were  published  in  New^  York,  and  a  two 
volume  edition  in  London. 

Some  of  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story — 
notably  Rev.  M.  Eells  and  W.  H.  Gray — have  sought  to  make  it  ap- 
pear that  I*ayette  did  not  communicate  this  information  to  Farn- 
ham, but  that  he  was  informed  of  this  easy  pass  by  Whitman,  de- 
claring that  he  revised  his  "Travels"  after  he  was  at  Whitman's 
mission  (which  was  September  23  to  30,  1839).  To  this  it  is  enough 
to  reply  that :  First,  this  paragraph  appears  in  its  regular  order 
under  the  date  of  his  stop  at  Ft.  Boise,  without  any  intimation 
that  he  had  learned  anything  included  in  this  paragraph  at  any 
later  time,  or  from  any  other  person  than  Payette. 

Second,  it  is  certain  that  this  paragraph  was  not  revised  by 
Farnham  after  his  visit  at  Whitman's,  on  account  of  the  error  it 
contains  about  these  missionaries,  as  follows:  "American  mission- 
aries from  the  State  of  Connecticut."  Immediately  preceding  Farn- 
ham, in  1839,  w^ere  Revs.  J.  S.  GriflQn  and  Asahel  Hunger  and  their 
wives,  who  had  been  sent  out  as  "Independent  Missionaries"  {i.  e., 
independent  of  the  American  Board)  by  some  churches  in  Con- 
necticut which  had  become  dissatisfied  with  the  management  of  the 
A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  Monsieur  Payette's  knowledge  of  the  geography  of 
the  States  was  limited,  and  he  very  naturally  would  speak  of 
"American  missionaries  from  the  State  of  Connecticut,"  since  the 
last  ones  who  had  passed  were  from  that  State,  but  if  during  his 
week's  stay  at  Whitman's  station  Farnham  had  discussed  this  mat- 
ter with  Whitman,  who  had  left  these  wagon  wheels  there  in  1836, 
not  for  the  reason  assigned  by  Farnham,  nor  from  any  opposition 
of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  but,  as  stated  by  Spalding  in  his  letter  of 
September  20,  1830,  as  follows :  "W^e  drove  a  wagon  to  Snake  Fort, 
and  could  have  driven  it  through  but  for  the  fatigue  of  our  animals, 
expect  to  get  it  at  some  future  time,"  certainly  Whitman  would 
have  corrected  the  statement  that  the  "thills  and  wheels  and  axle- 
tree"  Farnhnm  saw  at  Boise  were  left  there  by  "American  mission- 
aries from  the  State  of  Connecticut,"  since  neither  Whitman  nor 
anyone  of  his  associates  in  the  Mission  of  the  American  Board 
was  from  Connecticut. 

Griflin  and  Munger  are  said  to  have  taken  a  wagon  over  the 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  85 

Continental  Divide  and  as  far  as  Ft.  Hall,  where  they  left  it,  as 
Whitman  did  his  axle  and  wheels  at  Boise,  "on  account  of  the 
fatigue  of  their  animals." 

In  1840  Revs.  Harvey  Clark  and  A.  T.  Smith,  and  Mr.  P.  B. 
Littlejohn  and  their  wives,  Independent  Protestant  missionaries  to 
the  Oregon  Indians,  reached  Ft.  Hall  with  wagons,  and  left  them 
"on  account  of  the  fatigue  of  their  animals." 

What  happened  soon  after  they  left  Ft.  Hall  is  best  told  in  the 
following  extract  from  the  address  of  Hon.  Elwood  Evans  at  the 
1877  meeting  of  the  Oregon  Pioneer  Association  (Tr.  1877,  pp.  22- 
23): 

"Let  me  now  refer  to  the  statement  of  the  late  Dr.  Robert 
Newell,  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives  of  Oregon,  in  1846, 
a  name  familiar  and  held  in  high  remembrance  by  ancient  Oregon- 
ians.  It  is  interesting  for  its  history,  and  in  the  present  connec- 
tion illustrates  the  difficulty  at  that  time  of  getting  into  Oregon. 
It  details  the  bringing  of  the  first  wagon  to  Ft.  Walla  Walla,  Ore- 
gon, in  1840,  the  Wallula  of  Washington  Territory.  The  party 
consisted  of  Dr.  Newell  and  family.  Col.  Joseph  L.  Meek  and  family, 
Caleb  Wilkins  of  Tualitan  Plains  and  Frederic  Ermatinger,  a  Chief 
Factor  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company.  It  had  been  regarded  as 
the  height  of  folly  to  attempt  to  bring  wagons  west  of  Ft.  Hall. 
The  Doctor,  suggested  the  experiment,  Wilkins  approved  it  and 
Ermatinger  yielded.  The  Revs.  Harvey  Clark,  A.  B.  Smith  (should 
be  Alvin  T.  Smith,  Cf.  Gray's  History,  p.  109,  also  list  of  members 
Oregon  Pioneer  Association  in  Trans.,  1877,  p.  94)  and  P.  B.  Lit- 
tlejohn, missionaries,  had  accompanied  the  American  Fur  Com- 
pany's expedition  as  far  as  Green  River,  where  they  employed  Dr. 
Newell  to  pilot  them  to  Ft.  Hall.  On  arriving  there,  they  found 
their  animals  so  reduced  that  they  concluded  to  abandon  their  two 
wagons,  and  Dr.  Newell  accepted  them  for  his  services  as  guide.  In 
a  letter  from  the  Doctor,  he  says :  "At  the  time  I  took  the  wagons, 
I  had  no  idea  of  undertaking  to  bring  them  into  this  country.  I 
exchanged  fat  horses  to  these  missionaries  for  their  animals,  and 
after  they  had  been  gone  a  month  or  more  for  Wallamet,  and  the 
American  Fur  Company  had  abandoned  the  country  for  good,  I 
concluded  to  hitch  up  and  try  the  much-dreaded  job  of  bringing  a 
wagon  to  Oregon.  I  sold  one  of  those  wagons  to  Mr.  Ermatinger, 
at  Ft.  Hall.  Mr.  Caleb  Wilkins  had  a  small  wagon  which  Joel 
Walker  had  left  at  Ft.  Hall.  On  the  5th  of  August,  1840,  we  put 
out  with  three  wagons.  Joseph  L.  Meek  drove  my  wagon.  In  a 
few  days  we  began  to  realize  the  difficult  task  before  us,  and  found 
that  the  continual  crashing  of  the  sage  under  our  wagons,  which 
was  in  many  places  higher  than  the  mules'  backs,  was  no  joke. 
Seeing  our  animals  begin  to  fail,  we  began  to  light  up;   finally 


86  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

threw  away  our  wa<;on-beds  and  were  quite  sorry  we  had  under- 
taken the  job.  All  the  consolation  we  had  was  that  we  broke  the 
first  sage  on  that  road,  and  were  too  proud  to  eat  anything  but 
dried  salmon  skins  after  our  provisions  had  become  exhausted.  In 
a  rather  rough  and  reduced  state  we  arrived  at  Dr.  AVhitman's 
mission  station  in  the  Walla  Walla  valley,  where  we  were  met  by 
that  hospitable  man,  and  kindly  made  welcome  and  feasted  accord- 
ingly. On  hearing  me  regret  that  I  had  undertaken  to  bring 
wagons,  the  Doctor  said,  'Oh,  you  will  never  regret  it.  You  have 
broken  the  ice,  and  when  others  see  that  wagons  have  passed  they, 
too,  will  pass,  and  in  a  few  years  the  valley  will  be  full  of  our 
people.'  The  Doctor  shook  me  heartily  by  the  hand;  Mrs.  Whit- 
man, too,  welcomed  us,  and  the  Indians  walked  around  the  wagons, 
or  what  they  called  'horse  canoes,'  and  seemed  to  give  it  up.  We 
spent  a  day  or  so  with  the  Doctor  and  then  went  to  Ft.  Walla 
Walla,  where  we  were  kindly  received  by  Mr.  P.  C.  Pambrun,  Chief 
Trader  of  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  Superintendent  of  that  post. 
On  the  1st  of  October  we  took  leave  of  those  kind  people,  leaving 
our  wagons  and  taking  the  river  trail." 

The  simple  fact  that  these,  the  first  wagons  to  go  through  to  the 
Columbia,  were  not  only  outfitted  at  Ft.  Hall,  but  that  one  of  them 
was  owned,  outfitted  and  driven  by  Frederic  Ermatinger,  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  chief  trader  in  charge  of  Ft.  Hall  in  1838,  1839,  1840 
and  1841,  of  itself  reduces  to  senseless  drivel  all  the  scores  of  pages 
in  Barrows,  Nixon,  Craighead,  Mowry  and  the  other  advocates  of 
the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story,  which  accuse  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  of  opposing  the  passage  of  wagons  beyond  Ft.  Hall. 

One  point  should  not  be  forgotten  in  reading  the  account  of 
these  first  wagons  through  to'  the  Columbia.  Unable  from  their 
small  number  to  keep  a  party  of  pioneers  in  advance  to  dig  down 
steep  banks  of  creeks,  and  select  the  most  favorable  routes  over 
hills  and  mountains,  they  found  the  difficulties  of  the  way  so  great 
that  they  threw  away  their  wagon  beds,  and  only  got  the  frames 
and  running  gears  through  to  the  Columbia. 

This,  however,  was  all  that  was  of  any  special  importance,  as 
they  could  easily  get  pine  or  fir  boards  to  make  new  bodies  for  the 
wagons  at  Ft.  Vancouver,  but  well-seasoned  hardwood  lumber  for 
wagon  wheels,  and  axles,  and  framework  could  not  be  had,  nor 
could  the  iron  work  be  easily  obtained  at  Vancouver,  or  elsewhere 
in  Oregon  at  that  time. 

The  experience  of  these  men  fully  justified  the  advice  given  at 
Ft.  Hall  to  the  parties  of  '39,  '40,  '41  and  '42,  to  leave  their  wagons, 
and  go  from  there  with  ])ack  animals,  while  at  the  same  time  it  fully 
confirmed  the  declaraticm  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  Fur, Co.,  in  1830, 
that  they — a  party  of  resolute,  well-disciplined  men— could  have 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  87 

driven  their  wagons  through  to  the  Great  Falls  of  the  Columbia, 
and  would  have  found  a  better  road  beyond  the  Continental  Divide 
than  on  the  east  of  it.  Meek,  Newell  and  Wilkins  were  miserably- 
poor,  so  that  they  had  very  little  as  a  loading  for  their  wagons. 
Meek  and  Newell  had  Indian  wives,  who,  however  little  they  might 
have  been  adapted  to  grace  a  drawing  room,  were  true  "helpmeets" 
for  such  a  journey,  being  as  expert  as  the  men  in  all  its  drudgery 
and  hardships,  and  especially  in  making  and  breaking  camp.  The 
four  men,  Meek,  Newell,  Wilkins  and  Ermatinger,  were  all  experi- 
enced mountaineers  and  trappers,  vigorous,  skilled  in  "reading  the 
face  of  the  country,"  resourceful  in  any  wilderness  emergency,  as 
brave  as  any  men  ever  were,  able  to  converse  freely  with  the  In- 
dians, and  so  to  obtain  assistance  from  them  if  needed,  and  with 
all  the  prestige  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  assist  them — Ermatin- 
ger being  well  known  to  all  the  leading  Indians  of  that  region  as 
a  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  chief  trader — and  they  left  Ft.  Hall  with  fresh 
horses.  It  is  quite  within  bounds  to  say  that,  considering  all  these 
circumstances,  they  were  at  least  two  or  three,  if  not  five  or  six 
times  as  strong  a  party  for  the  journey  from  Ft.  Hall  to  the  Co- 
lumbia by  wagon  as  either  the  party  of  1839  or  1810,  composed  as 
they  were  of  unpractical  men,  fresh  from  theological  schools,  with 
little  experience  in  overcoming  the  difficulties  of  the  way,  with  no 
knowledge  of  the  Indian  language,  and  no  experience  in  dealing 
with  Indians  and  no  prestige  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  aid  them, 
with  stock  worn  out  by  the  more  than  1,200  miles  journey  from 
the  Missouri  frontier  to  Ft.  Hall,  with  white  wives  who  could  be 
of  little  service  in  pioneering  a  wagon  road,  and  loaded  down  with 
much  more  weighty  and  bulky  impedimenta  of  various  sorts  than 
these  poverty-stricken  trappers. 

If  Meek's  party,  with  all  their  skill,  and  courage,  and  energy, 
and  Indian  wives  to  help  them,  and  with  fresh  stock  at  Ft.  Hall, 
were  obliged  to  throw  away  their  wagon  bodies,  what  can  be  more 
evident  than  that  if  the  missionary  parties  of  '39  and  '40  had  tried 
it,  they  would  have  been  obliged  not  only  to  wholly  abandon  the 
wagons,  but  also  to  leave  behind  most,  if  not  all,  of  their  loading, 
and  so  have  experienced  much  more  of  hardship  and  discomfort, 
and  have  reached  the  Columbia  much  poorer  than  they  did  by 
taking  pack  animals  from  Ft.  Hall? 

Neither  Whitman  nor  his  wife  nor  any  other  of  the  American 
Board  missionaries  in  any  letter  written  to  the  American  Board, 
or  to  their  friends,  even  so  much  as  mentioned  the  arrival  of  these 
three  wagons  at  his  station  in  1840,  with  their  complete  demonstra- 
tion of  the  easy  practicability  of  the  route  for  loaded  wagons  when- 
ever a  party  of  80  to  100  or  more  resolute  and  tolerably  disciplined 
men  should  attempt  it. 


88  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

The  only  contemporaneous  account  I  have  been  able  to  find  of 
the  1841  overland  migration  is  the  very  brief  and  vague  one  in 
''Letters  and  Sketches,  with  a  Narrative  of  a  Year's  Residence 
Among  the  Indian  Tribes  of  the  Kocky  Mountains,  by  P.  J.  De 
Smet,  S.  J.,  Philadelphia,  1843." 

Father  DeSmet,  notwithstanding  his  great  ability,  is  like  most 
enthusiastic  missionaries  provokingly  inexact  in  many  of  his  state- 
ments, and  so  absorbed  in  the  emotions  excited  by  his  religion  that 
he  omits  any  mention  of  a  multitude  of  matters  that  seem  to  the 
historian  of  vastly  more  consequence  than  much  of  what  he  has 
written. 

On  page  G4,  speaking  of  the  crossing  of  the  Kansas  River,  he 
wrote :  "Our  baggage  wagons  and  men  crossed  in  a  pirogue,  w^hich 
at  a  distance  looked  like  one  of  those  gondolas  which  glide  through 
the  streets  of  Venice." 

(P.  G5)  "On  the  19th  (May,  1841,)  we  continued  our  journey 
to  the  number  of  seventy  souls,  fifty  of  whom  were  capable  of  man- 
aging the  rifle." 

(P.  104)  "It  was  here  that  we  left  Bear  River.  On  the  14th  of 
August  our  wagons,  having  proceeded  ten  hours  without  intermis- 
sion, arrived  at  the  outlet  of  a  defile  which  seemed  to  us  the  end 
of  the  world." 

(P.  125)  Writing  of  the  rapid  current  of  the  South  Platte  where 
they  had  forded  it,  he  writes :  "It  would  have  carried  away  wagons 
and  carts,  had  they  not  been  supported  on  all  sides  while  the  mules 
exerted  all  their  strength  to  pull  them  onward." 

(P.  120)  Crossing  of  North  Platte:  "The  largest  wagon  was 
carried  ofl;  by  the  force  of  the  current  in  spite  of  all  the  efforts, 
shouts  and  cries  of  the  men,  who  did  all  they  could  to  keep  them- 
selves from  being  drowned.  Another  wagon  was  literally  turned 
over." 

On  pages  127-8  he  describes  the  overturn  in  fording  Snake  River 
of  some  sort  of  wheeled  vehicle,  with  which  he  had  left  Ft.  Hall  for 
his  journey  with  the  Flathead  Indians  to  their  home  in  the  Flat- 
head Valley,  in  northwest  Montana.  He  twice  calls  it  a  "vehicle," 
and  three  times  a  "carriage,"  but  in  a  letter  to  another  party  de- 
scribing the  same  incident  (on  p.  175)  he  twice  calls  it  a  "cart." 
How  far  he  took  this  vehicle  he  does  not  inform  us,  nor  why  he 
abandoned  it  (if  he  did  so),  but  by  the  route  he  traveled  up  Snake 
River  to  Henry  Lake,  across  the  Continental  Divide  over  Red  Rock 
Pass,  down  the  Beaver  Head,  and  back  again  across  the  Continental 
Divide  over  Deer  Lodge  Pass,  he  could  certainly  have  driven  a  cart 
through  to  the  Flathead  Valley.  How  many  wagons  there  were  in 
this  party  is  unknown,  but  there  would  seem  to  havp  been  six  or 
eight  at  least  as  far  as  some  point  well  up  the  Platte,  for  in  an 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  89 

account  (p.  129)  of  an  alarm  given  at  the  appearance  of  a  band 
of  eighty  Chej'enne  warriors  he  says,  "The  Colonel  orders  the 
wagons  to  be  drawn  up  in  double  file,  and  places  between  them 
whatever  may  be  exposed  to  plunder." 

From  page  97  it  appears  that  that  part  of  this  migration  that 
had  started  for  California  did  not  go  to  Ft.  Hall,  but  '"left  us  a  few 
days  before  our  arrival  at  the  fort,  in  the  vicinity  of  the  boiling 
springs  which  empty  into  Bear  River"  (i  e.,  the  Soda  Springs, 
which  are  about  eighty  miles  south  of  east  from  Ft.  Hall). 

Page  96  informs  us  that  those  who  had  joined  the  party  merely 
for  information  or  pleasure,  some  five  or  seven  in  number,  had 
started  back  to  the  States  at  Green  River. 

Whether  the  California  party  took  any  wagons  beyond  Soda 
Springs  we  are  not  informed.  The  only  information  we  have  as  to 
the  relative  numbers  in  this  party  for  California,  and  those  for  the 
settlements  in  Oregon,  is  in  a  letter  of  Mrs.  Whitman  to  her  sister 
Jane,  dated  "Wieletpoo,  Oregon  Territory,  October  1,  1841"  (and 
published  in  Trans.  Oregon  Pioneer  Association,  1891,  p.  139),  as 
follows : 

"The  emigrants  were  twenty-four  in  number — two  families,  with 
small  children,  from  Missouri.  This  company  was  much  larger 
when  they  started.  About  thirty  went  another  route,  to  California. 
The  company  of  Jesuits  were  twelve  in  number,  consisting  of  three 
priests,  three  novitiates,  four  laborers,  and  their  pilot,  started  from 
St.  Louis,  one  they  found  on  their  way.  Their  pilot  is  Fitzpatrick, 
the  same  person  that  commanded  the  party  we  came  with  from  the 
States.  This  company  came  as  far  as  Ft.  Hall.  They  then  go  with 
the  Indians  to  the  Flathead  country,  or  Pend  d'Oreille.  It  is  not 
known  where  they  will  settle,  but  it  is  reported  that  they  expect  to 
locate  themselves  somewhere  in  that  region,  and  in  the  same  lan- 
guage that  part  of  our  mission  are  occupying." 

That  this  party  was  too  small  to  open  a  wagon  road  over  the 
Blue  Mountains  is  obvious,  and  the  fact  that  Ermatinger  was  still 
in  command  at  Ft.  Hall  is  all  the  proof  needed  that  there  was  no 
opposition  on  the  part  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  at  Ft.  Hall  to 
wagons  going  beyond  there,  and  that  the  advice  given  this  small 
party  to  leave  their  wagons  there  and  go  on  with  pack  horses  was 
entirely  proper. 

This  brings  us  to  the  1842  migration,  and  fortunately  we  have 
abundant  and  detailed  contemporaneous  evidence  of  the  movements 
of  this  migration,  and  the  fate  of  its  wagons,  and  its  treatment  at 
Ft.  Hall,  in  (a)  "The  Emigrants'  Guide  to  Oregon  and  California," 
by  Lansford  W.  Hastings  (who  was  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  party). 
The  first  edition  of  this  was  published  at  Cincinnati  in  1845  and 
later  editions  in  1847  and  1849. 


90  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

(b)  Fremont's  report  of  his  first  and  second  expeditions,  pub- 
lished by  the  Government  in  1845. 

(c)  The  reports  of  Br.  Elijah  White  (the  organizer  and  first 
captain  of  the  party)  as  Snb-Indian  Agent  to  the  Commissioner  of 
Indian  Afl'airs. 

(d)  ''White's  Ten  Years  in  Oregon,"  Ithaca,  N.  Y.,  1847. 

(e)  '"The  Journal  of  Hon.  Medorem  Crawford,"  one  of  the  pub- 
lications of  the  Oregon  Historical  Society,  and  Crawford's  address 
as  President  of  the  Oregon  Pioneer  Association  at  its  1881  meet- 
ing. This  address  is  fairly  entitled  to  rank  as  a  contemporaneous 
account  because  based  on  and  agreeing  with  his  journal.  This  was 
the  first  large  overland  migration,  numbering  fifty-one  men  and 
fifty-seven  women  and  children. 

From  these  strictly  contemporaneous  sources  we  learn  that  this 
first  large  American  overland  migration  started  from  the  Missouri 
frontier  May  16,  1842,  with  seventeen  or  eighteen  wagons.  Craw- 
ford's Journal  (p.  7)  says  17,  and  White's  Ten  Years  (p.  147)  says 
18;  that  at  the  American  trading  posts  of  Fts.  Laramie  and  John 
— rivals  and  competitors  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. — and  located 
more  than  600  miles  east  of  Ft.  Hall,  part  of  these  wagons  were 
traded  oft',  not  to  that  wicked  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  but  to  American 
Fur  traders ;  that  more  of  them  were  abandoned  in  the  Green  River 
Valley,  about  300  miles  east  of  Ft.  Hall,  and  only  seven  wagons 
reached  that  place,  and  that  they,  the  first  large  overland  migra- 
tion, were  receiv^ed  with  the  utmost  kindness  at  Ft.  Hall,  and  fur- 
nished with  flour  at  only  one-half  of  what  the  American  traders 
had  charged  them  at  Ft.  Laramie.  A  letter  to  me  from  Mr.  Craw- 
ford, dated  September  17,  1891,  says:  "Only  eight  wagons  went 
beyond  Green  River,  one  of  which  w\as  abandoned,  and  seven 
wagons  arrived  at  Ft.  Hall.  .  .  We  were  very  kindly  treated 
at  Ft.  Hall.  Never  heard  the  ofiicers  at  Ft.  Hall  charged  with 
misrepresentations.  It  had  been  understood  by  all  that  we  were 
too  late  to  take  wagons  farther  than  Ft.  Hall."  Hasting's  Emi- 
grants' Guide  (p.  9)  says:  "Upon  arriving  at  Fts.  Laramie  and 
John  we  were  received  in  a  very  kind  and  friendly  manner  by  the 
gentlemen  of  those  forts.  .  .  While  here  several  of  our  party 
disposed  of  their  oxen  and  wagons,  taking  horses  in  exchange. 
This  they  were  induced  to  do  under  the  impression  that  wagons 
could  not  be  taken  to  Oregon,  of  which  they  were  assured"  (not 
by  any  wicked  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  officers,  but)  "by  the  gentlemen 
of  these  forts  and  other  mountaineers,"  {i.  e.,  by  American  fur 
traders,  who  were  rivals  of  and  bitterly  antagonistic  to  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.,  and  as  thoroughly  patriotic  Americans  as  ever 
lived). 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  91 

HASTINGS'S  ACCOUNT  OF  TREATMENT  AT  FT.  HALL. 

Idem,  pp.  18-20,  describes  their  arrival  and  reception  at  Ft. 
Hall,  and  the  following  are  extracts:  "We  were  received  in  the 
kindest  manner  by  Mr.  Grant,  who  was  in  charge;  and  we  received 
every  aid  and  attention  from  the  gentlemen  of  that  fort  during 
our  stay  in  their  vicinity.  We  were  here  informed,  by  Mr.  Grant 
and  other  gentlemen  of  the  company,  that  it  would  be  impossible 
for  us  to  take  our  wagons  down  to  the  Pacific,  consequently  a  meet- 
ing of  the  party  was  called  for  the  purpose  of  determining  whether 
we  should  take  them  further  or  leave  them  at  this  fort,  from  which 
place  it  appeared  that  we  could  take  them  about  half  way  to  the 
Pacific  without  serious  interruption."  (This  would  be  to  the  east- 
ern base  of  the  Blue  Mountains,  W.  I.  M.)  "Some  insisted  that 
the  great  convenience  of  having  wagons  with  us  would  amply  war- 
rant taking  them  as  far  as  we  could,  while  others  thought,  as  we 
would  eventually  be  under  the  necessity  of  leaving  them,  it  would 
be  preferable  to  leave  them  at  the  fort,  especially  as  we  could  there 
obtain  tools  and  all  other  means  of  manufacturing  our  packing 
equipage,  which  we  could  not  do  elsewhere.  Another  reason  which 
was  urged  in  favor  of  leaving  them  was  that  we  could,  perhaps,  sell 
them  for  something  at  this  place,  which  we  could  do  at  no  other 
point  upon  the  route.  The  vote  having  been  taken,  it  was  found 
that  a  great  majority  was  opposed  to  taking  them  any  further,  the 
consequence  of  which  was  that  there  was  no  alternative  for  the 
minority,  as  our  little  government  was  purely  democratic.  Mr. 
Grant  purchased  a  few  of  the  wagons,  for  which  he  paid  in  such 
provisions  as  he  could  dispose  of  without  injury  to  himself.  He 
could  not,  of  course,  afford  to  give  much  for  them,  as  he  did  not 
need  them,  but  bought  them  merely  as  an  accommodation." 

FREMONT'S  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  1842  MIGRATION  AT  FTS. 
LARAMIE  AND  JOHN. 

Page  40  of  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  174,  28th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  being  report 
of  Fremont's  1842  Exploration,  under  date  of  July  13,  1842,  after 
describing  his  arrival  at  Fts.  Laramie  and  John  (less  than  600 
miles  from  Independence,  Mo.,  and  over  an  almost  level  country, 
with  a  plainly  marked  wagon  road  the  whole  way),  continues  as 
follows:  "The  emigrants  to  Oregon  and  Mr.  Bridger's  party  met 
here,  a  few  days  before  our  arrival.  Division  and  misunderstand- 
ings had  grown  up  among  them;  they  were  already  somewhat  dis- 
heartened by  the  fatigues  of  their  long  and  wearisome  journey, 
and  the  feet  of  their  cattle  had  become  so  much  worn  as  to  be 
scarcely  able  to  travel.  In  this  situation,  they  were  not  likely  to 
find  encouragement  in  the  hostile  attitude  of  the  Indians  and  the 


92  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

new  and  unexpected  difficulties  which  spranj?  up  before  them. 
They  were  told  that  the  country  was  entirely  swept  of  grass,  and 
that  few  or  no  buffaloes  are  to  be  found  on  their  line  of  route;  and 
with  their  weakened  animals  it  would  be  impossible  for  them  to 
transport  their  heavy  wagons  over  the  mountains.  Under  these 
circumstances,  they  disposed  of  their  wagons  and  cattle  at  the 
forts,  selling  them  at  the  prices  they  had  paid  in  the  States,  and 
taking  in  exchange  coffee  and  sugar  at  one  dollar  a  pound,  and 
miserable,  worn-out  horses,  which  died  before  they  reached  the 
mountains;  Mr.  Bondeau  informed  me  that  he  had  purchased 
thirty,  and  the  lower  fort  eighty  head  of  fine  cattle,  some  of  them 
of  the  Durham  breed." 

WHITE'S    ACCOUNT    OF    ABANDONING    WAGONS   BY   1842 
MIGRATION  AND  ITS  TREATMENT  AT  FT.  HALL. 

White's  ''Ten  Years  in  Oregon"  (p.  147)  says  that  they  set  out 
from  the  Missouri  frontier  with  18  wagons.  P.  154  "At  this  fort" 
(Laramie)  "they  exchanged  herds  for  fresh  horses  and  purchased 
materials  for  food — some  at  enormous  rates.  For  flour,  for  in- 
stance, they  were  charged  half  a  dollar  per  pint;  coffee,  tea,  sugar, 
etc.,  corresponding — all  of  which  they  were  obliged  to  have,  as 
many  of  the  party  were  by  this  time  destitute  of  the  articles." 
P.  162  "Here"  (/.  e.,  on  the  Little  Sandy  tributary  of  the  Green 
River,  more  than  300  miles  east  of  Ft.  Hall)  "twelve  of  the  party, 
who  were  extremely  desirous  of  advancing  more  rapidly,  divested 
themselves  of  carts,  wagons  and  all  unnecessary  encumbrances  and 
went  on,  leaving  the  general  encampment  to  follow  more  leisurely 
to  Ft.  Hall.  This  was  not  accomplished  without  a  struggle  with 
those  who  remained ;  some  being  grieved,  and  others  provoked,  at 
being  left  behind."  P.  104  "Four  days'  longer  march  through  an 
interesting  and  verdant  country  brought  them  to  Fort  Hall.  .  .  . 
Their  reception  was  of  the  kindest  character,  and  they  spent  a. 
week  very  ]>leasantly  with  Mr.  Grant  and  his  worthy  associate,  Mc- 
Donald, who  made  advantageous  exchanges  of  commodities  and 
afforded  them  every  facility  in  their  power  for  their  further  jour- 
ney. Flour  cost  them  but  half  what  it  did  at  Ft.  Laramie,  al- 
though conveyed  on  horseback  800  miles."  As  it  is  certain  that 
this  1842  migration  was  the  only  one  that  had  reached  Ft.  Hall 
when  Grant  was  in  command  of  it,  prior  to  the  arrival  of  the  1843 
migration,  and  as  the  wrongs  which  Gray  (writing  1800  to  1870), 
who  was  never  within  some  400  miles  of  Ft.  Hall  after  1838  till 
after  the  treaty  of  1846  was  made,  and  Spalding  (writing  in  1858 
to  1870),  who  was  never  within  300  to  400  miles  of,  Ft.  Hall  after 
1836,  allege  that  this  1842  migration  suffered  there,  at  the  hands 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  93 

of  Grant,  form  a  large  part  of  the  basis  on  which  they  rest  the 
Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story,  and  as  not  a  single  advocate  of 
that  story  has  ever  quoted  any  part  of  this  contemporaneous  evi- 
dence of  Dr.  White  and  L.  W,  Hastings,  the  leaders  of  the  party, 
and  of  Fremont  and  Crawford  as  to  what  actually  happened  to 
them  on  the  road,  inducing  them  to  abandon  their  wagons,  and  as 
to  their  treatment  at  Ft.  Hall,  it  seemed  to  me  best  to  quote  it 
fully  preparatory  to  discussing  the  experiences  of  the  1843  migra- 
tion at  Ft.  Hall. 

From  what  will  be  demonstrated  in  the  account  of  the  1843  mi- 
gration to  have  been  the  trifling  difficulties  of  the  route  from  Ft. 
Hall  to  Walla  Walla  it  is  certain  that  this  1842  migration,  if  har- 
monious and  under  any  reasonable  discipline,  could  have  taken  their 
wagons  to  the  Columbia.  But  they  were  inharmonious  from  the 
start,  and  when  only  a  month  on  the  road  split  into  two  discordant 
factions,  which  much  of  the  way  would  not  even  camp  together. 
The  advice  Grant  gave  them  therefore  was  good,  for  they  unques- 
tionably could  not  have  taken  their  wagons  over  the  Blue  Mountains. 

Instead  of  referring  to  these  strictly  contemporaneous  sources 
for  the  history  of  this  1842  migration  and  the  disposition  made  of 
its  wagons,  Spalding  when  he  first  launched  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  Story  wrote:  "In  1840  three  missionary  ladies  from  New 
York,  Mrs.  Smith,  Clark  and  Littlejohn,  and  their  husbands  crossed 
the  mountains  and  brought  their  wagons.  But  on  reaching  Fort 
Hall  they  were  compelled  to  abandon  their  wagons  by  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  .  .  .  In  1842  considerable 
emigration  moved  forward  with  ox  teams  and  wagons,  but  on  reach- 
ing Ft.  Hall  the  same  story  was  told  them,  and  the  teams  were 
saciificed  and  the  emigrant  families  reached  Dr.  Whitman's  station 
late  in  the  fall,  in  very  destitute  circumstances."  (Cf.  Pacific,  Sept. 
28,  1865.)  This  was  also  used  by  Spalding  in  his  "Lecture"  embody- 
ing his  version  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story.  (Cf.  p.  20 
of  his  pamplet;  Ex.  Doc.  37,  41st  Cong.  3d  Sess.)  Barrows  with 
his  usual  disregard  of  all  original  sources  copies  this  from  Spald- 
ing's pamphlet  (Cf.  Barrows  Or.,  p.  148),  and  then  on  p.  149  he  tells 
it  again  in  his  own  language  as  follows:  "In  1842  immigrants 
to  the  number  of  one  hundred  and  thirty-seven"  (should  be  108), 
"men,  women  and  children,  secular  and  missionary,  had  run  the 
gauntlet  of  the  traders  and  escaped  the  financial  steel-traps  of  a 
monarch  monopoly  all  along  the  path.  But  they  had  been  forced 
by  alarms  and  dangers  made  to  order  to  leave  their  wagons  be- 
hind." Eev.  M.  Eells  ("Ind.  Missions,"  p.  15G)  echoes  these  false 
statements  as  follows:  "At  Ft.  Hall  ...  in  1842  the  same 
misrepresentations"  (i.  e.,  that  wagons  could  not  be  driven  through 
to  the  Columbia)  "were  again  successful  with  a  small  company  of 


94  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

emigrants  led  by  Dr.  E.  White."  Dr.  Nixon  as  usual  gives  his 
fervid  imagination  full  swing  on  this,  and  (p.  190  of  "How  Marcus 
Whitman  Saved  Oregon")  prints  the  following  (which  is  more 
ridiculously  false  than  anything  anybody  else  has  written  about 
W^hitman's  wagon,  and  the  action  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  relative 
to  it,  and  all  subsequent  wagons)  :  "It  is  not  at  all  strange  they 
made  the  tight  they  did;  they  had  in  183()  feared  the  advent  of  Dr. 
Whitman's  old  wagon  more  than  an  army  with  banners.  They  had 
tried  in  every  way  in  their  power  except  by  absolute  force  to  arrest 
its  progress.  They  foresaw  that  every  turn  of  its  wheels  upon 
Oregon  soil  endangered  fur.  Those  in  command  at  Fort  Hall  and 
Fort  Boise  were  warned  to  be  more  watchful.  The  consequence  was 
that  not  another  wheel  w^as  permitted  to  go  beyond  those  forts  from 
1836  to  184:3."  As  a  specimen  of  pure  fancy  in  direct  contradiction 
of  the  facts  as  established  by  overwhelming  contemporaneous  evi- 
dence, this  is  probably  unsurpassed  even  by  any  other  writer  in 
support  of  the  Whitman  Legend,  and  in  this  paragraph  we  doubt- 
less have  the  climax  of  all  the  absurdities  about  Whitman's  "old 
wagon."  He  follows  this  by  the  usual  deceptive  quotation  made  by 
the  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Legend  from  Palmer's  Journal,  but 
shows  his  ignorance  of  the  book  by  beginning  with  ''Gen.  Palmer 
.  .  .  says  'While  at  Fort  Hall  in  1842'  "  (though  the  title  page 
of  Palmer's  Journal  shows  that  he  w^as  not  there  till  18-45),  and  then 
Nixon  continues  (on  p.  192)  :  ''They  {i.  e.,  the  H.  B.  Co.  at  Ft. 
Hall)  did  succeed  in  scaring  this  band  of  one  hundred  and  thirty- 
seven  men,  women  and  children  in  1842  into  leaving  all  their  wagons 
behind,  but  they  went  on  to  Oregon  on  pack-saddles." 

Instead  of  this  migration  arriving  at  Dr.  Whitman's  ''late  in  the 
fall  in  very  destitute  circumstances,"  they  arrived  there  very  early 
in  the  autumn,  to-wit,  Sept.  14  and  15.  (Cf.  Crawford's  Journal, 
p.  20,  and  Rev.  C.  Eells'  letter  of  Oct.  3,  1842,  to  D.  Greene,  secre- 
tary, which  says  that  letters  brought  by  Dr.  White  were  received 
by  Eells  and  Walker,  five  days'  journey  from  Whitman's  Station, 
on  Sept.  21,  and  no  contemporaneous  account  has  anything  to  say 
about  their  being  in  destitute  circumstances.) 

This  brings  us  to  the  1843  migration — the  first  one  which  ful- 
filled the  conditions  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  Fur  Co.'s  letter  of  Oct. 
29,  1830,  giving  an  account  of  the  first  wagons  to  the  Rockies,  in 
which  they  stated,  not  that  any  party  of  one,  or  two,  or  a  half  dozen 
men  could  drive  wagons  through  to  the  Great  Falls  of  the  Columbia, 
but  that  they,  a  well  armed  and  fairly  disciplined  company  of 
eighty-one  resolute  men — numerous  enough  to  be  able  to  keep  a 
small  band  of  pioneers  in  advance  to  select  the  best  route,  and  dig 
down  the  steep  banks  of  creeks,  and  cut  out  brush  ai;id  trees  where 
they  were  in  the  way — could  have  gone  through  with  their  wagons. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  95 

That  Whitman's  connection  with  the  origin  of  that  migration 
was  trifling  and  inconsequential  is  evident  from  four  of  his  own 
letters,  the  first  from  St.  Louis,  May  12th,  the  other  three  from 
Shawnee  Indian  Mission,  about  ten  miles  from  the  rendezvous  of 
the  migration.  May  27th,  28th,  30th,  1843. 

The  first  and  last  were  to  D.  Greene,  secretary,  and  the  others 
to  two  of  Dr.  Whitman's  brothers-in-law. 

All  about  the  migration  in  the  first  is  the  following: 

"I  have  made  up  my  mind  that  it  would  not  be  expedient  to 
take  any  families  across  the  mountains  this  year,  except  such  as 
can  go  at  this  time.  For  this  reason  I  have  found  it  my  duty  to 
go  on  with  the  party  myself." 

On  page  181,  Dr.  Mo  wry  prints  part  of  this  letter,  but  carefully 
omits  the  above  paragraphs. 

In  that  addressed  to  his  wife's  brother,  Edward  Prentiss,  dated 
May  27th  (i  e.,  five  days  after  the  migration  had  started  from  its 
camp  near  Independence,  Mo.,  for  Oregon),  all  that  relates  to  it  is 
the  following : 

''I  cannot  tell  you  very  much  about  the  migration  to  Oregon. 
They  appear  very  willing,  and,  I  have  no  doubt,  are  generally  of 
an  enterprising  character.  There  are  over  200  men,  besides  women 
and  children,  as  it  is  said.  No  one  can  well  tell  until  we  are  all  on 
the  road  and  get  together  how  many  there  are.  Some  have  been 
gone  a  week,  and  others  have  not  yet  started.  I  hope  to  start  to- 
morrow. I  shall  have  an  easy  journey,  as  I  have  not  much  to  do, 
having  no  one  depending  on  me." 

To  this  letter  Dr.  Mowry  (though  fully  informed  about  it)  never 
alludes,  and  the  same  is  true  of  every  other  book,  magazine  or  news- 
paper article  advocating  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story. 

I  have  conducted  sundry  excursions  to  the  Rocky  Mountain  and 
Pacific  Coast  regions  myself,  but  while  they  were  gathering  I  did 
not  stay  ten  miles  from  their  rendezvous,  nor  wait  for  an  invitation 
to  visit  and  address  them,  nor  say — after  they  were  fairly  started — 
that  "I  could  not  tell  very  much  about  them,"  and,  still  less,  that 
"I  expected  to  have  an  easy  journey,  not  having  much  to  do,  having 
no  one  depending  upon  me,"  and  if  there  were  no  other  letter  but 
this — the  authenticity  of  which  is  beyond  dispute — it  would  utterly 
destroy  the  whole  story  that  Whitman  had  any  special  influence 
on  or  concern  about  the  originating  or  organizing  of  that  migra- 
tion, or  felt  any  responsibility  for  its  getting  through  to  Oregon, 
with  or  without  wagons. 

In  that  of  May  28th  he  wrote:  ''I  have  been,  as  it  were,  wait- 
ing for  three  weeks.  When  I  got  to  St.  Louis  I  found  I  had  time, 
and  so  I  went  to  Quincy  and  saw  sister  Jane.  I  had  a  fine  journey 
all  the  way,  and  have  been  here  nearly  two  weeks.     I  shall  start 


96  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

tomorrow  or  next  day.  Some  of  the  emigrants  have  been  gone  a 
week,  and  others  are  just  going.  ...  I  hope  to  be  expeditious 
in  traveling.  After  we  get  to  Fort  Hall  I  shall  try  to  go  on  rapidly, 
if  not  before."  From  this  Dr.  Mowry  (erroneously  stating  that  it 
was  written  from  St.  Louis)  quotes  (on  pages  190-7)  about  275 
words,  but  carefully  omits  the  last  two  sentences  above  quoted, 
which  show  that  a  week  after  the  migration  had  started  (except  the 
few  stragglers  which  always  bring  up  the  rear  of  such  a  great  move- 
ment), Whitman  intended  on  reaching  Fort  Hall  (beyond  which 
there  was  no  danger  from  Indians)  to  leave  the  migration  behind, 
though  that  was  the  only  part  where  there  was  not  a  well-known 
wagon  road,  and  where  he  could  be  of  any  special  service  to  it. 

In  that  of  May  30th  he  wrote : 

''You  will  be  surprised  to  see  that  we  are  not  yet  started.  .  .  . 
I  shall  start  tomorrow.  I  regret  that  I  could  not  have  spent  some 
of  the  time  spent  here  in  suspense  with  my  friends  in  the  East.  I 
have  only  a  lad  of  thirteen,  my  nephew,  with  me.  I  take  him  to 
have  someone  to  stay  with  Mrs.  W. 

"I  cannot  give  you  much  of  an  account  of  the  emigrants  until 
we  get  on  the  road.  It  is  said  that  there  are  over  200  men,  besides 
women  and  children." 

The  proper  place  for  this  in  Mowry's  "Marcus  Whitman"  was 
on  page  197,  after  that  of  May  28th,  but  Dr.  Mowry  neither  prints 
it  there  nor  puts  a  footnote  of  reference  to  it,  but  on  pages  262-3 
he  puts  it  in  the  Appendix,  where  few  of  his  readers  will  peruse  it, 
and  fewer  note  its  significance  in  refuting  the  claim  that  Whitman 
was  prominent  in  originating,  organizing  and  leading  the  1843 
migration. 

I  have  specified  Dr.  Mowry's  treatment  of  these  four  letters  be- 
cause he  is  the  only  author  who  in  a  book  or  magazine  article  advo- 
cating the  Whitman  Legend  mentions  any  of  them,  and  the  in- 
genious way  in  which  he  suppresses  the  conclusive  evidence  they 
furnish  of  Whitman's  ignorance  concerning  and  utter  lack  of  any 
feeling  of  responsibility  as  to  the  organization  or  movements  of  this 
migration  even  eight  days  after  it  had  started  is  thoroughly  char- 
acteristic of  the  deceptive  methods  which  mark  every  chapter  of 
his  book. 

(Cf.  for  the  full  text  of  the  letters  of  May  27  and  28,  Tr.  Or. 
Pi.  Asscn.,  1891,  pp.  177-9,  and  for  those  of  May  12  and  30,  Vol.  138, 
Mss.  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.) 

It  is  impossible  to  determine  just  where  and  when  Whitman 
overtook  the  migration,  but  it  was  probably  when  they  were  about 
150  miles  on  their  journey,  as  a  letter  published  in  the  Burlington 
Gazette  of  July  8,  and  copied  into  the  New  York  Trihune  of  Aug. 
5,  1843,  says :     "Dr.  Whitman  from  Walla  Walla,  who  is  in   our 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  97 

company,  advises  that  the  company  divide  into  three  or  four  parties 
for  speed  and  convenience,  as  there  will  be  no  danger  from  Indians." 

This  letter  was  dated  Kansas  River,  June  3,  1843,  and  though 
unsigned  was  undoubtedly  written  by  M.  M.  McCarver.  Though 
dated  June  3,  it  is  altogether  probable  that  it  was  not  finished  for 
some  days  afterward,  as  their  first  opportunity  to  send  it  back  was 
on  June  10,  when  about  160  miles  from  their  starting  point,  they 
met  a  party  of  fur  traders  from  Fort  Laramie  going  back  to  the 
States  with  furs.  I  am  indebted  to  the  courtesy  of  Prof.  Shafer 
for  a  copy  of  this  letter. 

That  he  was  a  useful  member  of  the  party  after  he  overtook  it 
no  one  disputes,  but  that  he  was  in  any  sense  an  indispensible  mem^ 
ber  of  it,  or  that  it  would  not  have  gone  through  with  its  wagons 
had  he  not  been  with  it,  is,  I  think,  established  beyond  a  shadow 
of  a  doubt  by  the  evidence  with  which  I  shall  conclude  this  chapter, 
since  this  party  completed  the  development  of  the  transcontinental 
wagon  road  to  the  Dalles  of  the  Columbia  (i.  e.^  to  the  eastern  base 
of  the  Cascade  Mountains),  across  which  range  the  Barlow  road 
was  built  by  Barlow,  of  the  1845  migration,  in  the  spring  of  1846, 
as  hereinafter  stated  in  Chapter  III.  of  Part  II. 

Unfortunately  no  contemporaneous  book  was  published  by  any 
member  of  that  migration,  nor  has  any  such  full  and  detailed  con- 
temporaneous account  of  it  in  letters  or  journals  ever  been  found 
as  every  student  of  the  history  of  the  Oregon  Expansion  wishes  had 
been  written,  and  we  must  content  ourselves  with  a  few  letters  from 
various  members  of  the  migration  as  hereinafter  stated,  and  with 
very  brief  extracts  from  and  not  very  full  accounts  based  on  the 
only  known  journal  of  the  movements  of  the  migration.  This  journal 
was  kept  by  Peter  H.  Burnett  (who  was  the  first  Governor  of  the 
State  of  California),  and  of  this  he  says:  "I  kept  a  concise  journal 
of  the  trip  as  far  as  Walla  Walla  and  have  it  now  before  me."  ("Old 
Pioneer,"  p.  101.)  That  it  was  so  very  "concise"  as  to  be  little  more 
than  a  memorandum  from  which  to  refresh  his  memory  is  certain 
from  some  extracts  from  it  which  he  sent  me  in  1885.  It  is  much 
to  be  regretted  that  Governor  Burnett's  sons  have  not  so  far  acceded 
to  repeated  requests  made  by  me  (and  presumably  by  others)  to 
publish  that  journal  in  full,  excepting,  of  course,  such  parts  (if  there 
are  any)  as  relate  to  personal  and  domestic  matters  which  do  not 
concern  the  public,  or  at  least  to  furnish  me  with  a  transcript  of 
everything  in  it  which  relates  in  any  way  to  Dr.  Whitman.  Three 
accounts  (one  of  only  a  small  part,  and  the  other  two  of  the  whole) 
of  that  journey,  based  on  that  "concise  journal,"  have  been  pub- 
lished, as  follows:  (A)  Five  letters  written  by  Burnett  in  January, 
February  and  March,  1844,  and  printed  in  the  New  York  Herald, 
Dec.  28,  1844,  Jan.  5  and  6  (two  letters),  and  18,  1845.     These  let- 


98  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

ters  were  reprinted  in  Or.  Hist.  Quarterly^  December,  1902.  (B) 
Part  II.  (pp.  03-113)  of  George  Wilkes'  ^'History  of  Oregon,"  New 
York,  May,  1845.  (C)  Pages  07-138  of  Burnett's  "Recollections  of 
an  Old  Pioneer"  (written  between  March  and  October,  1878),  New 
York,  1880. 

Besides  this  there  are  some  very  important  passages  in  the  re- 
port of  Fremont's  1843  exploration,  as  will  hereinafter  appear,  and 
a  letter  of  Whitman,  of  Nov.  1,  1843,  and  a  few  other  letters  as  here- 
inafter mentioned  and  quoted  where  they  give  any  information  of 
consequence  about  the  development  of  the  Wagon  Road  to  Oregon. 
Three  of  the  Herald  letters  cover  the  movements  of  the  migration 
in  some  detail  only  up  to  June  27,  that  is  for  37  days,  and  for  only 
about  400  miles,  or  scarcely  one-fifth  of  their  journey,  leaving  them 
east  of  the  crossing  of  the  South  Fork  of  the  Platte,  and  more  than 
400  miles  east  of  the  Continental  Divide,  and  though  the  other  two 
letters  give  considerable  information  about  the  scenery,  geographi- 
cal divisions,  timber,  fisheries,  climate,  etc.,  of  Oregon,  there  is  not 
in  all  the  letters  published  in  the  Herald  the  least  information  about 
what  took  place  at  Fort  Hall  when  this  migration  reached  there, 
nor  about  their  reception  at  Fort  Boise,  Fort  Walla  Walla  and  Fort 
Vancouver,  nor  is  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  so  much  as  mentioned,  and 
though  Dr.  McLoughlin's  name  is  indeed  once  mentioned,  it  is  not 
"as  the  good  angel  of  the  migration,"  assisting  them  as  if  they  were 
his  brothers,  nor  is  there  the  least  intimation  that  they  were  in- 
debted to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  good  offices  in  any  way,  and  for 
anything  which  appears  in  the  Herald  letters.  Dr.  McLoughlin 
might  have  been  a  member  of  this  American  migration.  Nor  is  there 
a  word  in  the  Herald  letters  about  any  incident  of  their  journey 
beyond  the  South  Fork  of  the  Platte,  nor  a  word  about  their  ex- 
perience in  developing  the  wagon  road  beyond  Fort  Hall.  The  ac- 
count in  Wilkes  was  undoubtedly  based  upon  the  letters  written 
to  the  Herald  which  Burnett  (Cf.  O.  P.,  pp.  177-8)  stated  covered 
some  125  pages  of  foolscap. 

The  Herald  letters  are  absolutely  valueless  as  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  wagon  road,  though  they  are  of  value  as  to  the  organi- 
zation of  the  migration,  and  interesting  as  to  its  movements  over 
about  400  miles  of  level  prairie,  over  which  the  Rocky  Mountain 
Fur  Co.'s  train  of  loaded  wagons  had  gone  without  the  slightest 
difficulty  thirteen  years  before,  and  numerous  other  wagons  in  the 
intervening  years. 

The  Herald  published  but  a  small  part — probably  not  more  than 
about  one-third  to  one-fourth — of  the  matter  that  Burnett  would 
naturally  have  written  on  "some  125  pages  of  foolscap,"  and  in  the 
absence  of  the  full  text  of  the  letters,  and  of  any  pther  reference 
to  them  by  Burnett  than  that  heretofore  mentioned  (on  pp.  177-8  of 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  99 

"Old  Pioneer"),  it  must  ever  remain  uncertain  to  what  extent  its  edi- 
torial force  altered  those  which  it  did  publish,  though  it  is  probable 
(since  on  all  material  points  there  is  a  close  agreement  as  to  facts 
between  this  part  of  the  Wilkes  Narrative  and  the  Herald  letters), 
that  there  were  no  material  alterations  except  such  as  would  result 
from  a  condensation  of  them  by  a  New  York  city  editor,  wholly  un- 
familiar with  frontier  life  and  manners. 

Similarly  it  will  never  be  possible  to  determine  with  absolute 
certainty  whether  or  not  on  immaterial  points  Wilkes  rewrote  some 
parts  of  the  letters  in  a  more  ornate  style  than  that  of  Burnett,  nor 
is  it  of  any  particular  consequence,  since  by  comparison  with  Fre- 
mont's Kept,  and  with  Whitman's  letter  of  Nov.  1,  1843,  and  with 
"Ford's  Road  Makers"  (MS.),  and  with  the  letters  to  me  herein- 
after quoted  from  Burnett,  Shively,  Jesse  and  Lindsay  Applegate, 
and  from  a  comparison  of  the  movements  of  the  migration  from  the 
Missouri  frontier  to  Fort  Hall,  and  from  Fort  Hall  to  the  Columbia, 
it  can  be  proved  beyond  any  possibility  of  dispute  that  Wilkes'  state- 
ments are  correct,  even  when  they  differ  from  the  statements  on 
the  same  points  in  the  "Old  Pioneer,"  as  to  all  the  really  important 
points,  which  are : 

(1)  Were  the  difiQculties  of  the  route  from  Fort  Hall  to  the 
Columbia  serious  or  comparatively  trifling? 

(2)  What  was  Whitman's  real  relation  to  the  party,  and  how 
far  was  he  its  guide  beyond  Fort  Hall  ? 

(3)  What  treatment  did  the  migration  receive  at  Fort  Hall  from 
the  officers  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.? 

(4)  Would  the  migration  have  gone  through  with  wagons  had 
Whitman  not  been  with  it? 

As  Wilkes  did  not  claim  that  he  was  presenting  either  a  tran- 
script of  the  journal  or  a  verbatim  copy  of  the  letters,  he  violated 
no  principle  of  the  most  rigid  code  of  historical  or  literary  ethics 
if  in  preparing  the  "Narrative  of  the  Migration  of  1843"  (which 
he  explicitly  declared  was  not  a  copy  of  the  journal,  but  was  "pre- 
pared from  the  journal  of  a  member  of  the  recently  organized  Ore- 
gon Legislature")  he  rewrote  a  little  or  much  of  it,  provided  he  did 
not  change  any  material  statement  of  fact  it  contained,  nor  is  its 
value  as  an  "original  source"  for  this  migration  affected,  when  it 
is  admitted  that  in  some  wholly  immaterial  points,  as  for  instance 
the  number  of  miles  traveled  May  22  and  23,  the  statements  in 
Wilkes  are  erroneous.  That  they  were  not  intentionally  so  is  patent 
to  the  dullest  comprehension,  since  Wilkes  prints  (p.  112)  the 
"Table  of  Distance,"  which  proves  the  statements  as  given  (on  p. 
72)  of  the  distances  traveled  May  22  and  23  to  be  incorrect.  The 
probability  is  that  the  error  relates  to  distances  traveled  the  18th 
and  19,  or  the  20th  and  21st  (of  which  there  is  no  record  in  either 


100  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

the  letters  published  in  the  New  York  Herald  or  in  the  ''Old  Pio- 
neer"), and  which  were  misplaced  by  one  of  those  printer's  errors 
which  continually  vex  the  souls  of  authors  and  editors. 

First  as  to  the  route  from  Fort  Hall  to  the  Columbia. 

The  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  have  so 
enormously  exaggerated  the  difficulties  of  the  route  from  Fort  Hall 
to  the  Columbia  that  it  is  time  a  few  plain  and  indisputable  facts 
about  it  should  be  stated.  Let  us  consider  first  the  relative  rate  of 
travel  of  this  migration  over  this  part  of  the  route,  compared  with 
its  travel  from  the  Missouri  frontier  to  Fort  Hall — 1,323  miles — 
over  '*the  best  natural  road  of  its  length  in  the  world."  Burnett 
(''Old  Pioneer,"  pp.  llG-117)  says  they  arrived  at  the  Great  Soda 
Springs  on  Bear  Kiver  (83  miles  east  of  Fort  Hall),  on  Aug.  22, 
and  reached  Fort  Hall  Aug.  27,  and  quitted  Fort  Hall  Aug.  30, 
"many  of  our  young  men  having  left  us  with  pack  trains."  The 
Wilkes  Narrative  (pp.  82-4)  says  they  left  the  Great  Soda  Springs 
Aug.  27,  and  reached  Fort  Hall,  83  miles  distant,  Aug.  30.  Turn- 
ing to  Fremont's  Kept.  (Sen.  Ex.  Uoc.  174,  28th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp. 
133-9),  we  find  that  Aug.  22  he  rode  for  several  miles  down  Bear 
River  by  the  camps  of  this  migration,  who  "had  been  reposing  for 
several  days  in  this  delightful  valley  in  order  to  recruit  their 
animals  on  its  luxuriant  pasturage  after  their  long  journey,  and 
prepare  them  for  the  hard  travel  along  the  comparatively  sterile 
banks  of  the  Upper  Columbia."  He  did  not  make  a  camp  (which 
was  42  miles  east  of  Soda  Springs)  till  10  at  night  of  the  22d,  and 
under  date  of  the  23d  he  says :  ''The  road  in  the  morning  pre- 
sented an  animated  appearance.  We  found  that  we  had  encamped 
near  a  large  party  of  emigrants ;  and  a  few  miles  below  another 
party  was  already  in  motion."  August  26  he  remained  in  camp  at 
Soda  Springs,  till  11  a.  m.,  and  says:  "In  the  course  of  the  morn- 
ing the  last  wagons  of  the  emigration  passed  by."  These  wagons, 
of  course,  camped  the  night  of  Aug.  26  not  many  miles  beyond  Soda 
Springs,  and  started  from  there  on  the  27th,  as  stated  in  Wilkes, 
and  as  there  is  no  place  named  (in  Wilkes  or  in  the  "Old  Pioneer") 
between  Soda  Springs  and  the  Portneuf,  Burnett  naturally  and 
properly  would  say,  as  stated  in  Wilkes,  that  they  left  the  Soda 
Springs  on  the  27th,  though  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  was  a  camp 
probably  six  or  eight  miles  west  of  Soda  Springs,  where  they  camped 
the  night  of  the  2Gtli.  Fremont,  it  is  true,  says  (p.  139),  that  it 
was  "probably  fifty  miles  to  Fort  Hall  from  where  they  left  the 
valley  of  Bear  River."  But  he  did  not  go  over  that  route  to  Fort 
Hall,  while  Burnett,  who  did  go  over  it,  estimated  the  distance  from 
Soda  Springs  to  Fort  Hall  as  83  miles.  This  would  give  for  the 
distance  from  where  they  undoubtedly  camped  the  night  of  the  26th 
to  Fort  Hall  about  71  to  75  miles,  which  would  require  at  least 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  101 

four  days'  travel,  and  bring  them  to  Fort  Hall  about  August  30, 
as  Wilkes  states,  and  not  August  27,  as  Burnett  wrote  in  *'01d  Pio- 
neer" 35  years  after  the  event.  Accepting  the  date  given  in  the 
Wilkes  Narrative — August  30 — as  the  correct  one  for  the  arrival 
at  Fort  Hall  of  the  larger  part  of  the  migration,  which  it  is  certain 
that  Fremont  found  strung  out  along  Bear  River  Valley,  August 
22  to  25,  they  had  occupied  101  days  in  traveling  1,323  miles,  or 
an  average  rate  of  progress  of  practically  13  1-10  miles  a  day ;  and 
even  if  we  admit,  what  from  Fremont's  contemporaneous  record  is 
proved  incorrect,  that  they  reached  Fort  Hall  three  days  earlier, 
as  stated  in  the  "Old  Pioneer,"  that  would  only  make  the  average 
daily  journey  13%  miles.  How  does  this  compare  with  their  prog- 
ress from  Fort  Hall  to  the  Columbia?  Wilkes  and  "Old  Pioneer" 
agree  in  the  statement  that  they  came  down  the  western  slope  of 
the  Blue  Mountains  and  camped  on  the  Umatilla  on  Oct.  6,  and 
from  that  camp  to  Whitman's  Mission,  29  miles,  and  thence  to  Fort 
Walla  Walla,  25  miles,  in  all  54  miles,  was  a  stretch  of  plains  with 
some  sand  hills.  The  difficult  part  of  the  road,  therefore,  was  all 
passed  when  they  were  at  the  Umatilla,  and  they  had  traveled  417 
miles  from  Fort  Hall  to  the  Umatilla,  in  36  days,  if  we  accept  as 
correct  the  date  of  leaving  Fort  Hall — Sept.  1 — as  given  in  Wilkes, 
which  gives  an  average  of  11  7-12  miles  a  day,  while  even  if  we 
accept  the  manifestly  erroneous  "Old  Pioneer"  date  of  Aug.  30  for 
the  departure  from  Fort  Hall,  the  daily  average  was  10  37-38,  or 
practically  11  miles.  But  several  other  things  must  be  taken  into 
account. 

First — Their  teams  were  all  fresh  when  they  started  from  Mis- 
souri, May  22,  and  it  goes  without  saying  that  after  1,323  miles 
travel  they  were  much  reduced  in  strength  when  they  reached  Fort 
Hall. 

Second — Until  they  reached  Fort  Hall  they  had  all  the  way 
(except  perhaps  the  five  days,  Aug.  12-17,  ocupied  in  the  detour  via 
Bridger's  Fort  to  Bear  River),  a  plainly  marked  road,  and  needed 
to  spend  no  time  in  finding  or  making  a  road,  and  had  no  trees  to 
cut  to  open  the  road,  while  between  Fort  Hall  and  the  Umatilla,  or, 
more  strictly,  between  Fort  Boise  and  the  Umatilla,  they  had  to 
lose  a  little  time  at  a  few  points  determining  the  best  way  to  go, 
and  for  a  few  miles  (probably  about  25  miles,  or  three  days'  jour- 
ney) they  had  to  cut  a  road  through  the  forests  on  the  Blue  Moun- 
tains. 

Third — And  most  important  of  all,  from  May  22  to  Sept.  1,  they 
had  an  average  length  of  day  between  sunrise  and  sunset  of  two 
and  a  half  hours  more  than  between  Sept.  1  and  Oct.  G,  L  e.,  14 
hours  40  minutes,  against  12  hours  8  minutes.  The  lightening  of 
the  loads  by  the  consumption  of  provisions  counterbalanced  in  part. 


102  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

at  least,  the  jaded  condition  of  their  teams,  but  (since  the  weight 
of  wagons,  clothing,  furniture,  etc.,  remained  unchanged)  even  if 
we  allow  (what  I  do  not  think  is  correct)  that  the  lightening  of  the 
loads  entirely  balanced  the  jaded  condition  of  the  teams,  the  other 
two  conditions  are  not  atl'ected  thereby,  and  the  indisputable  fact 
remains  that  with  some  time  lost  in  road  making,  and  an  average 
of  two  and  a  half  hours  less  daylight,  this  migration  made  an  aver- 
age of  only  just  about  two  miles  a  day  less  from  Fort  Hall  to  the 
plains  of  the  Columbia  Kiver  than  from  the  beginning  of  their  jour- 
ney 1,323  miles  to  Fort  Hall,  over  what  Burnett  ("Old  Pioneer,"  p. 
116)  says  "was  perha])s  the  finest  natural  road  of  the  same  length 
to  be  found  in  the  world." 

In  Old  Pioneer  (p.  120)  Burnett  says:  "On  the  10th  of  October 
we  arrived  within  three  miles  of  Dr.  Whitman's  mission,  and  re- 
mained in  camp  until  the  14th."  This  conveys  the  impression  that 
the  whole  migration  stopped  there,  but  turning  to  Wilkes  (pp.  88-89) 
we  finding  the  following:  "On  the  8th  of  October  we  moved  on" 
{i.  e.,  from  the  Umatilla)  "and  encamped  in  the  afternoon  within 
t^venty  miles  of  the  Methodist  mission  establishment  kept  by  Dr. 
Whitman,  on  the  banks  of  a  little  tributary  of  the  Walla  Walla; 
but  not  finding  the  i)asturage  to  our  liking,  we  moved  on  the  next 
day  a  few  miles  farther  in  advance,  and  finding  a  prairie  offering 
us  all  the  advantages  we  sought,  the  section  to  which  I  was  at- 
tached, determined  to  make  a  halt  for  a  few  days,  to  recruit  our 
weary  and  way-worn  cattle.  Most  of  the  party  had  advanced  be- 
fore us,  and  were  already  at  the  mission,  but  we,  in  consequence  of 
our  halt,  which  continued  through  a  period  of  five  days,  did  not 
reach  there  until  the  1.5th."  Burnett's  high  character  is  sufficient 
guarantee  that  the  omission  (on  p.  126  of  "Old  Pioneer")  of  the  fact 
that  only  the  section  to  which  he  was  then  attached  made  this  five 
days'  halt,  and  so  lengthened  the  time  from  Fort  Hall  to  the  Co- 
lumbia River,  and  that  the  larger  part  of  the  migration  did  not  make 
this  halt,  and  so  reached  the  Columbia  Oct.  11,  instead  of  Oct.  16,  as 
he  did,  was  not  intended  to  deceive ;  but  it  is  a  striking  commentary 
on  the  claims  of  Prof.  Schafer  that  the  "Old  Pioneer"  should  be  sub- 
stituted for  the  Wilkes  Narrative  as  "virtually  a  contemporary 
source  for  the  whole  of  the  migration  of  1813,"  that  in  this,  as  in 
every  other  case  in  which  we  can  compare  the  Wilkes  account  with 
unquestionable  contemporary  documents  it  is  found  correct. 

Nothing  is  more  evident  than  that  when  Burnett  wrote  the  "Old 
Pioneer"  account  of  this  migration  he  followed  his  journal  closely, 
and  wrote  only  of  the  movements  of  that  part  of  the  migration  to 
which  he  was  attached.  That  section  of  the  party  reached  Fort 
Hall,  as  he  states  in  "Old  Pioneer,"  and  as  the  extract  from  his 
journal   (published  by  Prof.  Schafer  in  the  Oregonian  of  Nov.  13, 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  103 

1903,  states),  on  Aug.  27,  but  that  the  bulk  of  the  migration  could 
not  have  arrived  there  before  Sept.  1,  as  stated  by  Wilkes,  is  certain 
from  the  extracts  herein  quoted  from  Fremont's  Kept.,  under  dates 
Aug.  22-26  inclusive.  How  far  from  accurate  was  Burnett's  memory 
even  about  very  important  matters  connected  with  the  movements 
of  this  migration  35  years  afterward,  when  he  wrote  the  account  of 
it  in  "Old  Pioneer,"  is  evident  from  the  things  he  omits  to  mention 
in  that  account,  which  are  in  both  the  Herald  letters  and  the  Wilkes 
Narrative,  and  a  letter  of  his  to  me  fully  confirms  this,  and  also 
shows  that  his  journal  was  so  very  concise  as  to  be — certainly  on 
most  dates — merely  a  series  of  memoranda,  with  which  to  subse- 
quently to  refresh  his  memory,  and  not  any  detailed  account  of  the 
events  of  the  day.  June  26,  1885,  he  wrote  me  as  follows :  ''In  re- 
ply to  your  third  inquiry"  (which  was  as  to  how  long  the  1843  mi- 
gration continued  together,  and  where  and  how  they  divided)  "I 
will  give  the  following  extracts  from  my  journal,  as  the  entries  were 
"Made  at  the  time,  except  a  few  corrections  in  the  spelling  of  certain 
words  and  names."  (I  quote  the  extracts  from  his  journal  verbatim 
as  they  are  given  in  his  letter. ) 

''May  22,  1843.  A  general  start  was  this  day  made  from  the  ren- 
dezvous. 

"May  23.     Wagons  still  coming  in,  and  others  yet  behind. 

"May  26.  Camped  at  Kansas  River.  ...  As  yet  no  organi- 
zation and  no  guards  put  out. 

"May  28.     Wagons  still  coming  in  rapidly. 

"May  30.  The  company  still  crossing  rapidly  and  new  wagons 
arriving. 

"May  31.  Still  crossing  Kansas  River.  .  .  .  Many  of  the 
company  disposed  to  separate  into  two  companies. 

"June  1.  Organized  our  company  by  electing  P.  H.  Burnett 
captain,  and  Mr.  Nesmith  orderly  sergeant  and  nine  council  men. 

"June  10.  At  night  we  overtook  old  man  Zachary  and  some 
others  and  formed  a  good  corral. 

"July  4.  Continued  crossing."  (S.  Platte.)  .  .  .  "Chiles 
here  overtook  us. 

"July     8.     Part  of  the  company  joined  Chiles  and  left  us. 

"July  14.  Reached  Fort  Laramie  about  10  o'clock.  .  .  Here 
we  found  Applegate  and  Chiles. 

"July  20.  Mr.  Hembree  belonged  to  Applegate's  company,  which 
is  only  two  or  three  miles  ahead  of  us  now. 

"Aug.  6.     Overtook  Applegate's  company. 

"Aug.  7.  Chiles'  company.  Cooper's  and  Applegate's  all  in 
sight  at  12. 

"Aug.  13.  Divided  our  company  into  smaller  companies  of 
about  15  wagons. 


104  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

"The  greater  portion  of  the  emigrants  for  Oregon  left  the  ren- 
dezvous together  on  May  22,  1843,  and  others,  who  had  not  arrived 
ill  time,  came  up  later.  At  the  time  of  the  organization,  June  1, 
they  had  all  overtaken  us  except  a  very  few,  and  all  joined  in  the 
organization  except  Mr.  Zachary  and  a  few  others,  not  exceeding 
thirty  persons  in  all,  according  to  my  best  recollection.  They  united 
with  the  company  June  10.  The  first  division  of  the  company  oc- 
curred July  0,  when  some  of  the  company  left  with  Chiles,  who  had 
overtaken  us  on  the  4th  of  July  on  his  way  to  California,  and  while 
we  were  crossing  South  I'latte.  But  as  we  approached  nearer  to 
the  Kocky  Mountains  our  people  formed  still  smaller  parties,  as 
shown  in  the  extracts  herein  given." 

Certainly  one  of  the  most  important  events  connected  with  the 
journey  of  that  migration  was  its  division  into  two  sections,  one 
under  the  command  of  William  Martin,  and  the  other  under  Jesse 
Applegate,  which  took  place  according  to  both  the  Herald  letters 
and  the  Wilkes  Narrative  on  June  9,  1843,  yet  that  seems  to  have 
been  omitted  entirely'  from  Burnett's  "concise  journal,"  and  is  not 
even  alluded  to  in  the  "Old  Pioneer,"  and  so  completely  had  his  long 
residence  in  California  put  him  "out  of  touch"  with  Oregon  pioneer 
afifairs  and  dimmed  his  memory  where  there  was  no  record  in  his 
"concise  journal"  by  which  to  refresh  it,  that  in  this  letter  to  me 
he  explicitly  declares  (in  answer  to  my  inquiry  as  to  when  the  1843 
migration  first  divided)  that  "the  first  division  of  the  company 
occurred  July  6." 

Whitman's  letter  of  Nov.  1,  1843,  hereinbefore  referred  to,  not 
only  confirms  this  item  in  Wilkes'  account  about  "most  of  the  party" 
having  reached  the  mission  before  Oct.  10,  but  also  shows  that  Bur- 
nett's statement  in  "Old  Pioneer"  (p.  IIG)  that  "Whitman  was  our 
pilot  from  Fort  Ilall  to  the  Grand  Ronde"  is  incorrect,  and  that,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  over  the  really  difficult  portion  of  the  route  (i.  e., 
that  west  of  Fort  Boise),  Whitman  was  not  with  the  party  at  all, 
and  this  fact  confirms  the  accuracy  of  the  only  allusion  made  in 
the  Wilkes  Narrative  to  any  important  service  rendered  to  the  mi- 
gration by  Whitman  at  any  time  between  its  starting  from  the 
Missouri  frontier  on  I\Iay  22,  and  the  time  they  reached  his  mission 
station  and  ])urchased  provisions  of  him,  being  charged  therefor  the 
full  market  rates.  Wilkes  (p.  35)  says:  "On  the  23d  (Sept.)  we 
started  off  again,  with  the  same  cutting  wind  that  had  visited  us 
the  day  before,  and  which  stayed  with  us  over  night.  Our  road  to- 
day was  tolerably  good,  and  after  having  accomplished  16  miles 
over  it,  we  brought  our  day's  journey  to  a  close  on  the  bank  of  a 
dry  creek,  with  no  water  at  hand,  except  what  was  found  in  a  sort 
of  puddle  in  its  bed.  Two  miles  further  on  would  have  taken  us 
to  a  good  encampment,  with  plenty  of  fine  range  and  water,  but  the 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  105 

Indian  pilot  who  had  been  employed  for  us  by  Dr.  Whitman  was 
ahead,  and  out  of  reach  with  the  foremost  wagons." 

The  following  extracts  from  Whitman's  letter  of  Nov.  1,  1843, 
to  Kev.  D.  Greene,  secretary  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  (which  no  advo- 
cate of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  has  ever  quoted,  except 
that  Mowry,  in  his  "Marcus  Whitman  and  the  Early  Days  of  Ore- 
gon," not  having  quoted  a  word  from  it  in  the  body  of  his  book, 
nor  even  referred  to  it  in  his  Chapter  XVIII.  describing  the  journey 
of  the  1843  migration,  prints  this  letter  in  full  in  his  Appendix, 
where  few  will  read  it,  or  note  its  significance  in  connection  with 
the  claims  made  for  Whitman  as  leader  of  that  migration),  show 
that  Whitman  left  the  migration  at  Fort  Boise,  100  miles  east  of 
the  Grande  Ronde,  and  did  not  see  any  members  of  it  again  (except 
perhaps  some  of  those  who  went  ahead  on  horseback  and  with  pack 
trains)  until  Oct.  9  or  10,  at  or  near  his  mission.  ''By  taking  a 
light  wagon  I  was  enabled  to  come  ahead  from  Fort  Boise.  At 
the  Grand  Ronde,  east  of  the  Blue  Mountains,  I  met  a  letter  from 
Mr.  Walker,  written  at  Lapwai,  urging  me  to  come  with  speed  to 
see  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Spalding,  w^ho  were  both  in  a  dangerous  state  of 
sickness.  At  this  point  I  engaged  one  of  the  Wailatpu  (Kayuses) 
to  complete  the  piloting  of  the  company  across  the  Blue  Mountains, 
which  he  did  in  a  most  judicious  and  faithful  manner,  and  I  hired  a 
fresh  horse  and  guide,  and  went  direct  to  Mr.  Spalding's,  where  I 
arrived  on  Monday  evening,  25th  Sept.  ...  I  did  not  remain 
but  one  night,  and  then  returned  with  Mr.  Geiger  to  Wailatpu, 
which  had  been  left  in  the  care  of  an  Indian  only,  the  wheat  being 
in  chaff  and  out  of  doors  and  part  of  the  corn  to  be  gathered  by  them 
also.  In  the  meantime  some  of  the  advance  parties  of  the  emi- 
grants on  horseback  had  reached  and  broke  open  the  house,  and 
left  it  open  to  the  Indians,  although  wheat,  corn,  potatoes,  garden 
vegetables,  hogs  and  cattle  were  in  abundance  outside."  He  then 
went  to  Tshimakain  (i.  e.,  Eells'  and  Walker's  station),  and  re- 
turned to  Wailatpu,  Oct.  9,  and  the  letter  continues :  "In  the  mean- 
time a  large  part  of  the  emigrants  had  passed  my  house  with  their 
wagons."  Whitman  could  not  have  made  the  journey  from  the 
Grand  Ronde  to  Spalding's  station  in  less  than  two  days,  so  that  he 
must  have  been  in  Grande  Ronde  (69  miles  in  advance  of  the  migra- 
tion he  is  stated  in  "Old  Pioneer"  to  have  been  piloting)  on  the 
same  23d  of  Sept.  that,  according  to  the  Wilkes  Narrative,  that  mi- 
gration, for  want  of  a  competent  pilot,  was  obliged  to  make  a  "dry 
camp,"  only  31  miles  from  Boise.  As  both  "Old  Pioneer"  and 
Wilkes  state  that  the  migration  did  not  reach  Fort  Boise  till  Sept. 
20,  it  is  evident  that  if  Whitman  was  with  them  when  they  reached 
Boise,  and  did  not  stop  there  at  all  himself,  he  must  have  traveled 
"with  a  light  wagon"  the  100  miles  between    Boise    and    Grande 


lOG  ACQUISITION    OF   OREGON 

Ronde  (including  the  26  miles  up  Burnt  River,  which  all  authorities 
agree  was  much  the  roughest  stretch  of  road  the  whole  journey) 
in  the  four  days  Sept.  20-23,  which  is  enough  of  itself  to  demonstrate 
beyond  dispute  that  the  road  offered  no  obstacle  that  these  260  reso- 
lute men — descendants  of  those  who  had  pioneered  from  the  Atlan- 
tic Coast  over  the  Alleghanies  and  across  the  prairies  to  the  Mis- 
souri— could  not  easily  have  surmounted  if  neither  Whitman  nor 
"the  Indian  he  employed"  had  been  with  them.  Wilkes  (p.  87)  says 
they  might  have  avoided  the  two  worst  hills  they  encountered  on 
the  whole  route  (being  the  ones  by  which  they  descended  into  the 
Grande  Ronde  on  Oct.  1,  and  left  it  on  Oct.  2)  ''by  turning  to  the 
left  on  the  mountain  side  and  passing  them  altogether,"  and  this 
(which  is  not  mentioned  in  "Old  Pioneer")  finds  full  confirmation 
in  Fremont's  Rept,  under  date  of  Oct.  17-21,  1843  (pp.  178-81)  as 
follows : 

"Probably  with  the  view  of  avoiding  a  circuit,  the  wagons  had 
directly  descended  into  the  Ronde  by  the  face  of  a  hill  so  very 
rocky  and  continuously  steep  as  to  be  apparently  impracticable; 
and  following  down  on  their  trail  we  encamped  on  one  of  the 
branches  of  the  Grande  Ronde  River,  immediately  at  the  foot  of 
the  hill." 

We  have  already  quoted  Burnett's  statement  in  Wilkes  (p.  88) 
that  Fremont  found  a  much  easier  route  over  the  Blue  Mountains 
than  the  one  over  which  the  migration  went.  Burnett  in  "Old  Pio- 
neer" makes  no  allusion  to  this,  though  he  gives  considerable  space 
to  his  interviews  with  Fremont  and  travel  with  him  from  Fort  Van- 
couver to  the  Dalles.  (O.  P.,  pp.  130-135.)  Turning  again  to  Fre- 
mont's Rept.  (pp.  179-181),  we  find  that  the  reason  why  he  followed 
the  migration  down  the  steep  hill  into  the  Ronde,  instead  of  making 
the  circuit  of  the  mountain  side,  was  that  he  intended  to  go  a  good 
ways  farther  to  the  north  in  the  Ronde,  and  cross  the  Blue  Moun- 
tains by  an  easier  pass.  (P.  179.)  "Oct.  18.  We  resumed  our 
journey  somewhat  later  than  usual,  traveling  in  a  nearly  northerly, 
direction  across  this  beautiful  valley;  and  about  noon  reached  a 
place  on  one  of  the  principal  streams,  where  I  had  determined  to 
leave  the  emigrant  trail,  in  the  expectation  of  finding  a  more  direct 
and  better  road  across  the  Blue  Mountains.  At  this  place  the  emi- 
grants appeared  to  have  held  some  consultation  as  to  their  further 
route,  and  finally  turned  directly  off  to  the  left,  reaching  the  foot 
of  the  mountain  in  about  three  miles,  which  they  ascended  by  a 
hill  as  steep  and  difficult  as  that  by  which  we  had  yesterday  de- 
scended to  the  Ronde.  Quitting,  therefore,  this  road,  which,  after 
a  very  rough  crossing,  issues  from  the  mountains  by  the  heads  of 
the  Umatilah  River,  we  continued  our  northern  course  across  the 
valley,  following  an  Indian  trail  which  had  been  indicated  to  me 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  107 

by  Mr.  Payette,  and  encamped  at  the  northern  extremity  of  the 
Grande  Ronde  on  a  slough-like  stream  of  very  deep  water,  without 
any  apparent  current.  .  .  .  Elevation  2,600  feet  above  the  sea. 
Oct.  19.  We  passed  out  of  the  Grande  Ronde  by  a  fine  road  along 
the  creek,  which  for  a  short  distance  runs  in  a  kind  of  rocky  chasm. 
Crossing  a  low  point,  which  was  a  little  rocky,  the  trail  conducted 
us  into  the  open  valley  of  the  stream — a  handsome  place  for  farms, 
(p.  180.)  .  .  .  We  halted  for  a  few  minutes  in  the  afternoon 
at  the  foot  of  the  Blue  Mountains,  on  a  branch  of  the  Grand  Ronde 
River,  at  an  elevation  of  2,700  feet.  Resuming  our  journey,  we  com- 
menced the  ascent  of  the  mountain  through  an  open  pine  forest  of 
large  and  stately  trees,  among  which  the  balsam  pine  made  its  ap- 
pearance; the  road  being  good,  with  the  exception  of  one  steep 
ascent  with  a  corresponding  descent,  which  might  both  have  been 
easily  avoided  by  opening  a  way  for  a  short  distance  through  the 
timber.  Oct.  20.  .  .  .  The  instrument  carriage  occasioned 
much  delay,  it  being  frequently  necessary  to  fell  trees  and  remove 
fallen  timber.  The  trail  we  were  following  led  up  a  long  spur  with 
a  very  gradual  and  gentle  rise.  .  .  .  After  traveling  occasionally 
through  open  places  in  the  forest,  we  were  obliged  to  cut  a  way 
through  a  dense  body  of  timber,  from  which  we  (p.  181)  emerged 
on  an  open  mountain  side,  where  we  found  a  number  of  small 
springs,  and  encamped  after  a  day's  journey  of  10  miles.  Our  ele- 
vation here  was  5,000  feet."  "Oct.  21.  .  .  .We  continued  to 
travel  through  the  forest,  in  which  the  road  was  rendered  difficult 
by  fallen  trunks,  and  obstructed  by  many  small  trees  which  it  was 
necessary  to  cut  down.  But  these  are  only  accidental  difficulties 
which  could  easily  be  removed,  and  a  very  excellent  road  may  be 
had  through  this  pass,  with  no  other  than  very  moderate  ascents 
and  declivities."  This  pass  was  undoubtedly  the  same  one  of  which 
Payette  had  informed  Thomas  J.  Farnham,  as  stated  by  Farnham 
in  that  passage  from  his  "Travels"  (quoted  on  p.  83  ante),  which, 
as  hereinbefore  stated,  Wilkes  quoted  (on  p.  52)  as  demonstrating 
beyond  question  the  feasibility  of  the  route  for  a  national  railroad 
to  the  Pacific.  As  there  is  not  a  shadow  of  doubt  that  Payette 
would  as  readily  have  informed  the  leaders  of  the  1813  migration 
of  this  "easy  pass"  as  he  had  informed  Farnham,  in  1839,  and  as 
he  informed  Fremont  18  days  after  the  migration  had  passed,  it  is 
plain  that  if  the  migration,  instead  of  depending  on  Whitman's 
Indian  guide  Isticus,  had  consulted  Payette,  they  would  have  learned 
of  a  much  easier  route  over  the  Blue  Mountains  than  the  one  over 
which  Isticus  led  them.  That  the  difficulties  of  that  one,  however, 
were  by  no  means  great  will  appear  from  the  simple  fact  that  both 
Wilkes  (pp.  87-88)  and  "Old  Pioneer"  (pp.  125-126)  agree  that  the 
migration  left  the  Grande  Ronde  Oct.  2,  and  crossed  the  Blue  Moun- 


108  ACQUISITIOX    OF    OREGON 

tains  43  miles,  to  the  Tanatilla  Kiver,  dni-inf;  Oct.  2  to  6  inclusive. 
That  is,  with  a  day  from  snnrise  to  sunset  of  only  ll^/o  hours,  with 
considerable  forest  through  which  they  were  compelled  to  cut  their 
way,  and  with  teams  pretty  thoroughly  worn  out,  they  traveled 
across  this  range  at  an  average  of  8  3-5  miles  a  day,  which  was 
only  about  41/0  miles  less  than  they  had  traveled  on  an  average  from 
the  Missouri  frontier,  1,323  miles,  to  Fort  Hall,  over  *'the  best  nat- 
ural road  of  its  length  in  the  world,"  starting  with  fresh  teams, 
with  no  forest  through  which  to  cut  their  way,  and  having  an  aver- 
age length  of  day  from  sunrise  to  sunset  of  14  hours  and  40  minutes. 
Whoever  will  read  Fremont's  Kept,  of  his  1843  exploration  with 
care  will  find  in  it  ample  confirmation  of  the  positions  herein  ad- 
vanced as  to  the  slight  difficulties  of  the  route  beyond  Fort  Hall, 
for  though  he  says  the  road  up  Burnt  River  was  very  bad,  he  men- 
tions no  other  very  bad  road  except  a  few  hills,  and  several  times 
he  declares  of  other  portions  of  this  part  of  the  road  that  they 
were  ''very  good.''  The  Or.  Hist.  Qnartcrli)  for  December,  1902 
(pp.  395-8),  publishes  a  letter  of  Tallmadge  B.  Wood,  ''written  about 
April,  1844,"  from  Willamette  Falls,  Oregon.  He  states  that  he 
was  second  in  command  of  one  of  the  divisions  of  the  1843  migra- 
tion, but  does  not  say  which  division  it  was,  and  his  letter  gives  a 
very  brief  and  vague  account  of  the  movements  of  the  migration, 
covering  only  about  700  words.  Though  he  intended,  undoubtedly, 
to  be  accurate,  it  is  curious  that  two  of  the  three  dates  he  gives 
are  erroneous,  as  he  says  they  started  April  25,  1843,  instead  of 
May  22,  and  that  they  arrived  at  Fort  Hall  the  last  of  September 
instead  of  the  last  of  August  or  first  of  September.  He  also  says 
there  were  320  wagons,  whereas  J.  W.  Nesmith,  who  was  the  orderly 
sergeant  of  the  company,  says  "there  were  111  wagons  of  all  kinds." 
(Tr.  Or.  P.  Asscn.  1875,  p.  53).  (P.  396)  Wood's  letter  says: 
"We  arrived  at  Fort  Hall  the  last  of  September.  Here  (though 
two-thirds  of  the  distance  was  passed)  the  difficulties  of  the  journey 
just  commenced,  though  not  so  difficult  as  had  been  represented,  yet 
the  roads  from  this  place  were  very  rough  and  grass  in  many  places 
very  scarce."  So  far  as  yet  appears,  besides  these  forty-eight  words 
in  Wood's  letter,  the  only  contemporary  accounts  of  the  difficulties 
of  the  way  beyond  Fort  Hall  except  what  is  in  the  Wilkes  Narrative 
and  in  Fremont's  Kept,  are: 

First — In  a  letter  published  in  the  Ohio  statesman,  Sept.  11, 
1844,  dated  Willamette,  Nov.  fJ,  1843,  Mr.  M.  M.  McCarver  (who  was 
one  of  the  Council  of  Nine  and  one  of  those  who  went  ahead  of  the 
migration  on  horseback  from  Fort  Hall)  wrote  as  follows:  "We 
have  had  less  obstacles  in  reaching  here  than  we  had  a  right  to 
expect,  as  it  was  generally  understood  before  leaving  the  States 
that  one-third  of  the  distance — to-wit,  from  Fort  Hall  to  this  place — 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  109 

was  impassable  with  wagons.  Great  credit,  however,  is  due  to  the 
energy,  perseverance  and  industry  of  this  emigrating  company,  and 
particularly  to  Dr.  Whitman,  one  of  the  missionaries  at  the  Walla 
Walla  Mission,  who  accompanied  us  out.  His  knowledge  of  the 
route  was  considerable,  and  his  exertions  for  the  interest  of  the 
company  were  untiring." 

Second — In  the  Or.  Hist.  Quarterly  for  September,  1903,  are 
two  letters  from  members  of  this  migration. 

(1)  (On  pp.  274-G)  A  letter  from  John  Boardman  to  J.  Wells, 
Esq.,  dated  at  Sandwich  Islands,  July  17,  1844,  and  i^ublished  in 
the  Western  (Mo.)  Journal,  Jan.  4,  1845,  and  space  only  permits 
the  following  extracts:  "I  left  the  Shawnee  Mission  on  the  29th 
of  May;  our  route  was  through  the  Caw  Indian  country,  which  is 
good,  has  considerable  timber,  and  is  well  watered.  It  is  a  bad 
country  for  wagons  to  travel  through,  having  so  many  sloughs  and 
bad  creeks;  the  teams  were  often  stalled,  and  made  very  slow  prog- 
ress. ...  On  the  13th  of  July  we  arrived  at  the  crossing  of 
Laramie's  Fork,  at  the  fort  of  the  American  Fur  Co.  .  .  .  After 
we  left  Laramie  we  came  to  the  Black  Hills,  the  worst  of  all  travel- 
ing— hilly,  sandy  and  full  of  wild  sage — 'tis  death  on  a  wagon. 
The  country  is  all  of  this  barren,  sandy  kind,  until  we  reach  Fort 
Hall,  and  destitute  of  timber.  Arrived  at  Fort  Hall  the  13th  of 
September,  after  experiencing  some  cold  rains,  snow,  hail,  etc.  The 
country  down  Snake  River  is  hilly,  rocky,  sandy,  no  timber,  but  an 
abundance  of  sage,  until  we  get  to  the  Blue  Mountains.  Here  is 
plenty  of  pine,  the  country  very  broken,  and  bad  traveling,  though 
the  wagons  went  through.  ...  I  hardly  know  what  to  write 
about  Oregon,  or  what  you  would  like  to  know;  though  if  I  were 
where  you  are,  and  should  see  someone  from  Oregon,  I  could  ask 
him  a  hundred  questions,  as  you  could  me.  The  report  of  Wilkes 
that  you  had  is  very  correct."  (This  is,  of  course,  the  14  pages  of 
Lieut.  Charles  Wilkes'  Special  Report,  published  in  the  2d  edition 
of  Pendleton's  Report,  of  which  5,000  copies  were  ordered  printed 
by  the  House  Jan.  4,  1843.  [Ho.  Ex.  Doc.  No.  31,  27th  Cong.,  3d 
Sess.]— W.  L  M.) 

It  will  be  noticed  that  Boardman  gives  the  time  of  arrival  at 
Fort  Laramie  as  July  13,  whereas  the  Wilkes  Narrative  gives  the 
date  as  July  9,  and  says  they  left  there  July  11,  while  "Old  Pioneer" 
says  they  arrived  July  14,  and  remained  two  days  repairing  the 
wagons.     Boardman  also  did  not  arrive  at  Fort  Hall  till  Sept.  13. 

(2)  On  pp.  280-84  is  a  letter  from  Mr.  S.  H.  Gilmore  dated  Fort 
Vancouver,  Nov.  11,  1843,  He  does  not  give  a  date  when  they  were 
at  any  point  between  May  27  and  the  arrival  of  the  party  he  was 
with  at  Fort  Hall,  Aug.  25,  two  days  in  advance  of  the  party  Bur- 
nett was  with,  and  19  days  before  the  party  with  whom  Boardman 


no  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

was  traveling.  All  that  Gilmore  (who  was  later  a  prominent  man 
in  Oregon)  says  about  the  difficulties  of  the  road  is  the  following 
extracts:  "We  left  Westport  on  the  27th  of  May,  and  crossed  the 
Kansas  River  near  the  old  village;  thence  up  the  north  side  of 
the  Kansas,  where  we  had  a  great  deal  of  rain  and  stormy  weather 
to  encounter.  .  .  .  We  came  to  a  small  stream,  called  Sweet- 
water, one  of  the  streams  of  the  northern  branch  of  Platte;  we 
traveled  up  this  until  we  passed  through  the  Rocky  Mountains, 
which  we  found  to  be  as  good  as  any  part  of  our  road."  .  .  . 
(This  plainly  refers  only  to  the  stretch  of  road  up  the  Sweetwater 
and  over  the  South  Pass  to  Green  River — W.  I.  M.)  .  .  ,  "We 
traveled  several  days  down  this  river  (Bear  River),  then  crossed 
over  to  the  Snake  River,  and  arrived  at  Fort  Hall  on  the  25th  day 
of  August.  Here  I  found  some  of  the  best  beef  I  ever  saw.  .  .  . 
From  here  we  traveled  down  Snake  or  Lewis  River,  crossing  and 
recrossing  the  same  to  Fort  Bosie  (Boise)  ;  thence  to  Fort  Walla 
Walla,  crossing  the  Blue  Mountains  in  our  route.  We  passed  them 
much  easier  than  I  expected.  .  .  .  The  road  from  Independence 
to  Fort  Hall  is  as  good  a  road  as  I  would  wish  to  travel ;  from  Fort 
Hall  there  is  some  bad  road  and  some  good." 

(3)  Prof.  Schafer,  in  a  letter  to  me,  quotes  the  following  from 
"a  letter  from  one  of  the  emigrants"  published  in  the  New  York 
Herald  of  June  3,  1843:  "We  had  a  very  good  road  to  the  fort 
(Hall),  from  there  the  worst  in  the  world."  There  seems  to  be 
some  mistake  as  to  either  the  paper  or  the  date  as  to  this,  for  in 
response  to  a  request  for  a  copy  of  the  whole  letter,  the  librarian 
of  the  Wisconsin  Historical  Society  informs  me  that  the  Herald 
of  that  date  contains  no  letter  from  anyone  referring  to  the  Oregon 
migration. 

Assuming  that  in  the  Herald  (or  some  other  paper),  such  an 
anonymous  letter  was  published,  it  amounts  to  nothing  in  view  of 
the  indisputable  figures  hereinbefore  given  showing  the  rate  of  prog- 
ress of  the  migration.  The  expression  "the  worst  road  in  the  world" 
is  merely  an  exaggerated  statement  of  one's  impatience  with  a  rough, 
uncomfortable  road,  and  I  have  heard  that  precise  expression  used 
about  stretches  of  highway  in  Ohio,  Kentucky,  Vermont  and  New 
Hampshire  which  had  been  traveled  continuously  for  from  60  to  200 
years.  Whitman's  letter  of  Nov.  1,  1843,  does  not  contain  one  word 
about  the  difficulties  of  the  route,  nor  do  any  of  his  subsequent 
letters  give  any  information  about  any  difficulties  of  the  way,  but 
only  assertions  that  the  opening  of  the  wagon  road  was  due  to  his 
being  with  the  party. 

Wilkes  (p.  86)  :  "On  the  28th  (Sept.)  the  road  got  worse,  if 
anything,  than  before,  and  after  floundering  through  the  hills  and 
hollows  for  six  miles,  we  struck  a  hill  of  most  difficult  ascent  that 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  111 

required  us  to  double  our  teams.  Yet  even  this  hill,  as  well  as  an- 
other still  more  difficult  which  we  descended,  might  have  been 
entirely  avoided  by  an  advance  of  200  yards  farther  up  the  stream, 
where  nature  had  furnished  an  easy  ascent  round  the  sides  of  both. 
This,  however,  was  not  discovered  until  all  the  wagons  had  passed. 
The  above  hill  is  the  first  that  we  have  met  in  our  road,  which 
obliged  us  to  double  our  teams."  This  was  at  the  head  of  Burnt 
River,  and  in  H.  H.  Bancroft's  "Oregon,"  Vol.  I.,  p.  401,  we  find  the 
following:  "The  first  grading  required  on  any  part  of  the  route 
from  the  main  Platte  to  the  Columbia  was  at  the  crossing  of  the 
ridge  at  the  head  of  Burnt  River;  and  this,  too,  was  the  first  occa- 
sion on  which  it  had  been  necessary  to  double  teams."  (Ford's 
Road  Makers,  Ms.  10.)  This  first  hill  requiring  any  grading  or 
the  doubling  of  teams  was  350  miles  west  of  Fort  Hall,  and  1,673 
miles  from  their  starting  point,  and  only  131  miles  east  of  Fort 
Walla  Walla. 

As  Prof.  Schafer  (in  Oregonian  for  Nov.  13,  1903)  still  insists 
that  Wilkes  deliberately  deceived  his  readers  as  to  the  difficulties 
of  the  road  west  of  Fort  Hall,  and  as  he  does  not  quote  one  word 
of  what  Fremont  says  about  that  stretch  so  that  his  readers  can 
judge  whether  his  condemnation  of  Wilkes  is  warranted  by  the 
facts,  I  will  now  quote  every  word  in  Wilkes,  and  in  Fremont's 
Rept.,  and  in  "Old  Pioneer"  as  to  the  road  from  Fort  Boise  to  the 
Grande  Ronde,  where  Fremont's  route  diverged  from  that  of  the 
migration,  that  he  might  follow  Payette's  direction  and  cross  the 
Blue  Mountains  by  an  easier  route,  as  hereinbefore  stated. 

There  is  no  use  in  wasting  any  time  on  the  road  from  Fort  Hall 
to  Fort  Boise,  since  that  offered  no  difficulties  worth  considering, 
as  this  migration  traveled  that  274  miles  at  almost  exactly  the  same 
average  daily  rate  as  they  did  the  1,323  miles  from  the  Missouri 
frontier  to  Fort  Hall,  though  their  day  was  an  average  of  almost  two 
and  a  half  hours  shorter  from  Hall  to  Boise  than  from  Missouri  to 
Fort  Hall.  No  one's  opinion  is  of  any  consequence  on  historical  mat- 
ters except  as  it  agrees  with  "the  weight  of  evidence"  after  examin- 
ing all  the  valid  evidence,  and  unlike  Prof.  Schafer  in  this  matter,  I 
prefer  to  put  all  the  evidence  before  my  readers,  that  they  may  judge 
for  themselves  as  to  whether  there  is  any  warrant  for  his  accusations 
against  Wilkes. 

Fort  Boise  to  Burnt  River  occupied  the  migration  Sept.  22,  23 
and  24  according  to  Wilkes,  and  21,  22,  23  and  24  according  to  "Old 
Pioneer."  The  distance  is  given  in  the  "Table  of  Distance"  in  both 
Wilkes  and  the  Herald  letters  as  41  miles,  and  by  Fremont,  who 
went  over  it  Oct.  11  and  12,  as  47  miles.  Fremont's  distances  (where 
his  route  was  identical  with  that  of  the  1843  migration)  are  almost 
always  considerably  greater  than  those  given  by  Burnett,  and  prob- 


112  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

ably  more  accurate,  but  as  his  route  was  very  different  from  that 
of  the  migration  from  the  crossing  of  the  Kansas  Kiver  to  the  Sweet 
Water,  from  Soda  Springs  to  Fort  Hall,  and  from  the  place  where 
the  migration  started  out  of  the  Grande  Konde  over  the  Blue  Moun- 
tains to  Whitman's  station,  it  seems  necessary  to  use  Burnett's 
"Table  of  Distances"  for  the  whole  journey. 

Let  us  compare  what  Wilkes  says  as  to  the  quality  of  the  road 
with  what  Fremont  says.  We  cannot  compare  with  "Old  Pioneer" 
for  this  stretch,  for  all  Burnett  says  of  this  journey  from  Fort  Boise 
to  Burnt  River  is  the  following  (on  p.  124)  :  "On  the  21st  we  re- 
crossed  the  Snake  River  by  fording,  which  was  deep  but  safe.  On 
the  24th  we  reached  Burnt  River," 

Turn  now  to  Wilkes  (p.  85)  :  "On  the  22d  we  left  Fort  Boise, 
and  after  traveling  over  an  excellent  road  for  fifteen  miles  we  came 
to  a  creek  in  the  latter  part  of  the  afternoon.  This  we  crossed 
without  serious  difficulty,  and  encamped  upon  its  western  bank. 
.  .  .  On  the  23d  we  started  off  again  with  the  same  cutting  wind, 
etc.     .     .     .     Our  road  today  was  tolerably  good. 

"On  the  23d  we  had  to  encounter  a  very  hilly  road  which  re- 
tarded our  progress  most  seriously.  The  hills,  however,  were  not 
high,  neither  were  they  rugged  or  abrupt,  but  they  were  frequent, 
and  thence  our  difficulty." 

Now  let  us  see  what  Fremont  reported  of  this  precise  stretch 
of  road. 

On  p.  174  of  his  report  of  his  1843  expedition  (Sen.  Ex.  Doc. 
174,  28  Cong.,  2  Sess.)  we  find,  under  date  of  Oct.  11,  1843.  .  .  . 
"At  11  o'clock  we  resumed  our  journey.  .  .  .  About  sunset  we 
reached  the  Riviere  aux  MalTteurs.  .  .  .  With  the  exception  of 
a  bad  place  of  a  few  hundred  yards  long,  which  occurred  in  rounding 
a  point  of  a  hill  to  reach  the  ford  of.  the  river,  the  road  during  the 
day  had  been  very  good." 

Oct.  12  (p.  175).  "Leading  for  five  miles  up  a  broad,  dry  branch 
of  the  Malheurs  River,  the  road  entered  a  sandy  hollow,  where  the 
surface  was  rendered  firm  by  the  admixture  of  other  rock;  being 
good  and  level  until  arriving  near  the  head  of  a  ravine,  where  it 
became  a  little  rocky,  and  we  met  with  a  number  of  sharp  ascents 
over  an  undulating  surface.  Crossing  here  a  dividing  ridge,  it  be- 
came an  excellent  road  of  gradual  descent  down  a  very  marked 
hollow." 

Oct.  13  (p.  17G).  "Leaving  entirely  the  Snake  River  ...  we 
ascended  a  long  and  somewhat  steep  hill ;  and  crossing  the  dividing 
ridge  came  down  into  the  valley  of  Burnt  River." 

Up  Burnt  River  all  accounts — Wilkes,  Fremont  and  "Old  Pio- 
neer"— agree  was  the  roughest  road  of  the  whole  journey,  but  it 
was  only  2G  miles,  and  it  was  not  so  bad  but  what  they  made  the 


ACQUISITION   OF    OREGON  113 

26  miles  in  three  days  (Sept.  25,  26  and  27),  or  an  average  of  eight 
and  two-thirds  miles  a  day,  with  only  11  hours  53  minutes  between 
sunrise  and  sunset.  A  careless  reading  of  Wilkes  under  date  of 
Sept.  27  would  lead  one  to  think  that  the  migration  left  Burnt  River 
on  the  morning  of  the  27th,  but  a  careful  reading  and  a  footing  of 
the  miles  traveled  on  the  25th,  26th  and  27th  shows  that  it  was  only 
the  more  difficult  part  of  the  road  up  Burnt  River  that  they  left 
behind  them  on  the  morning  of  the  27th,  and  that  they  did  not 
finally  leave  its  valley  till  the  28th,  which  agrees  exactly  with  "Old 
Pioneer"  (p.  124). 

Let  us  now  compare  the  ''Old  Pioneer,"  the  Wilkes  and  the  Fre- 
mont accounts  of  this — admitted  by  all  to  be — the  worst  stretch  of 
road  on  the  whole  route. 

All  that  "Old  Pioneer"  says  (p.  124)  is:  "It  hardly  deserves  to 
be  called  a  river,  being  only  a  creek  of  fair  size.  The  road  up  this 
stream  was  then  a  terrible  one,  as  the  latter  runs  between  two  tall 
ranges  of  mountains,  through  a  narrow  valley  full  of  timber,  which 
we  had  not  the  force  or  time  to  remove." 

Wilkes  (p.  85)  :  "Sept.  25  we  started  up  the  line  of  Burnt  River. 
The  valley  of  the  stream  is  very  narrow,  at  some  points  being  not 
more  than  20  yards  across,  and  it  is  hemmed  in  by  mountains  on 
either  side. 

"Though  it  abounds  in  timber,  quite  a  safe  and  passable  road 
could  be  made  through  it  by  clearing  out  the  space  for  a  track,  but 
to  do  this  effectually  several  crossings  of  the  stream  would  have  to 
be  made. 

"This  could  easily  be  performed  in  consequence  of  its  low  banks 
and  firm  bottom,  but  we  had  no  time  to  clear  out  the  way,  but  of 
late  the  tortuousness  of  the  roads  had  so  scattered  and  divided  our 
company  that  we  proceeded  belter  skelter  along  in  separate  detach- 
ments, each  following,  as  best  it  could,  the  careless  lead  of  those 
who  went  before.  W^e  were  thus  betrayed  into  many  difiiculties 
that  might  have  been  avoided,  if  an  orderly  arrangement  had  been 
preserved.  Sometimes  the  turn  of  only  a  few  yards  would  have 
saved  us  the  most  obstructive  hills  and  hollows,  and  I  am  informed 
that  the  course  of  the  river  could  have  been  avoided  altogether  by  a 
turn  to  the  left,  which  strikes  the  trail  near  Powder  River,  running 
in  an  extensive  plain,  remarkable  for  a  solitary  tree  in  its  midst, 
known  as  the  "Lone  Pine."  But  if  this  should  not  be  the  case  (Foot- 
note by  Wilkes,  'It  is  the  case'). 

"1  would  advise  future  emigrants  to  select  some  eight  or  ten 
good  men  to  send  on  ahead  to  search  for  the  most  eligible  route,  and 
if  necessary  to  clear  one. 

"This  will  save  them  much  trouble.  .  .  .  The  range  from  this 
spot  to  the  end  of  the  journey  is  most  excellent;  the  bunch  grass  is 


114  ACQUISITION   OF    OREGON 

plenty  in  the  valleys  and  on  the  sides  of  the  hills,  and  there  is  plenty 
of  rushes  along  the  banks  of  the  stream.  We  made  but  eight  miles 
today. 

"On  the  2Gth  the  road  got  worse,  if  anything,  than  before,  and 
after  floundering  through  hills  and  hollows  for  six  miles  we  struck 
a  hill  of  most  difficult  ascent,  that  required  us  to  double  our  teams. 
Yet  even  this  hill,  as  well  as  another  still  more  difficult,  which  we 
descended,  might  have  been  entirely  avoided  by  an  advance  of  200 
yards  farther  up  the  stream,  where  nature  has  furnished  an  easy 
ascent  round  the  sides  of  both.  This,  however,  was  not  discovered 
till  all  the  wagons  had  passed.  .  The  above  hill  is  the  first  that  we 
have  met  in  our  road,  which  obliged  us  to  double  our  teams. 

"Sept.  27.  .  .  .  This  morning  we  emerged  from  our  troublous 
passage  through  the  immediate  valley  of  the  river,  and  struck  a 
beautifully  undulating  valley  .  .  .  and  after  completing  12 
miles  over  a  good  road,  halted  for  the  night." 

This  is  every  word  in  the  Wilkes  Narrative  as  to  the  road,  and 
the  movements  of  the  migration  over  the  26  miles  up  Burnt  River. 
It  is  interesting  to  compare  what  he  says  about  the  ease  with  which 
they  could  have  avoided  the  two  worst  hills  had  they  gone  200  yards 
further  up  the  stream,  "where  nature  had  furnished  an  easy  ascent 
round  the  sides  of  both,"  with  their  experience  as  stated  in  both 
Wilkes  (p.  72)  and  in  the  Herald  letters  (N.  Y.  Herald,  Jan.  0,  1845, 
Or.  Hist.  Quart.,  Dec,  1902,  p.  409)  on  May  24  at  the  crossing  of  the 
Wakarusa  River,  a  small  branch  of  the  Kansas.  (The  Herald  calls 
it  Walkalusia,  and  Wilkes  Walpalusia.) 

They  reached  this  stream  May  23,  and  Wilkes  says:  "As  soon 
as  we  had  fallen  into  our  regular  disposition  for  the  night  and  staked 
our  horses,  several  of  us  turned  out  with  nets  and  fishing  tackle 
to  sweep  and  tickle  the  river.  But  though  we  were  successful  in 
furnishing  ourselves  with  some  amusement,  we  were  not  so  success- 
ful in  the  object  of  our  endeavors,  being  only  fortunate  enough  to 
secure  a  few  trout,  most  of  which  fell  to  the  share  of  the  female 
department  of  the  expedition. 

"On  the  morning  of  the  24th  we  made  preparations  for  crossing 
the  stream,  but  in  consequence  of  the  steepness  of  its  banks  were 
obliged  to  let  our  wagons  down  with  ropes,  and  to  draw  them  up  in 
the  same  way.  .  .  .  We  might  have  avoided  all  the  delay  and 
trouble  of  this  crossing  if  we  had  searched  a  hundred  yards  farther 
up  the  stream,  for  there  we  would  have  found  a  practicable  ford." 

The  Herald  letter  says:  "We  let  our  wagons  down  the  bank 
(which  was  very  steep)  with  ropes.  There  was,  however,  a  very 
practicable  ford  unknown  to  us  about  100  yards  above.  .  .  .  We 
found  very  few  fish  in  this  stream." 

If  in  the  open  prairie  of  Eastern  Kansas,  "a  very  practicable 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  115 

ford"  within  100  yards  of  where  they  spent  the  time  and  labor  needed 
to  let  their  wagons  down  with  ropes  and  draw  them  up  the  steep 
banks  of  this  ''little  stream  of  clear  water,  only  about  60  feet  wide 
and  with  a  pebbly  bottom,"  escaped  the  observation  of  all  the  mem- 
bers of  this  great  party,  though  they  had  not  only  camped  there 
over  night,  but  had  fished  along  the  stream,  how  entirely  credible  is 
the  statement  in  Wilkes  that  had  they  gone  200  yards  farther  up 
this  canon  of  Burnt  River  they  might  have  found  a  side  valley  which 
would  have  given  them  an  easy  ascent  out  of  the  canon,  and  avoided 
these  two  difficult  hills. 

The  Herald  letters  make  no  mention  of  this  stretch  of  road  up 
Burnt  River  except  the  following:  ''You  see  no  stumps  on  the  road 
until  you  get  to  Burnt  River,  and  very  few  there."  (N.  Y.  Herald, 
Jan.  6,  1845,  reprinted  in  0.  H.  Quart,  Dec,  1902,  p.  418.) 

This  appears  on  p.  68  of  the  Wilkes  Narrative  as  follows :  "You 
meet  with  no  stumps  on  the  road  until  you  come  to  Burnt  River,  and 
there  they  are  very  few." 

Let  us  see  now  what  Fremont  says  of  this  road  up  Burnt  River. 

Under  date  of  Oct.  13  (p.  176)  :  "We  now  traveled  through  a 
very  mountainous  country,  the  stream  running  rather  in  a  ravine 
than  a  valley,  and  the  road  is  decidedly  bad  and  dangerous  for  single 
wagons,  frequently  crossing  the  stream  where  the  water  is  some- 
times deep;  and  all  the  day  the  animals  were  fatigued  in  climbing 
up  and  descending  a  succession  of  steep  ascents,  to  avoid  the  pre- 
cipitous hill  sides;  and  the  common  trail,  which  leads  along  the 
mountain  side  at  places  where  the  river  strikes  the  base,  is  some- 
times bad  even  for  a  horseman.  .  .  .  Oct.  14.  .  .  .  After 
traveling  about  three  miles  up  the  valley,  we  found  the  river  shut 
by  precipices  in  a  kind  of  canon,  and  the  road  makes  a  circuit  over 
the  mountains.  In  the  afternoon  we  reached  the  river  again,  by 
another  little  ravine;  and  after  traveling  along  it  for  a  few  miles, 
left  it  enclosed  among  rude  mountains.  I  have  never  seen  a  wagon 
road  equally  bad  in  the  same  space  as  this  of  yesterday  and  today. 
I  noticed  where  one  wagon  had  been  overturned  twice,  in  a  very 
short  distance,  and  it  was  surprising  to  me  that  those  wagons  which 
were  in  the  rear,  and  could  not  have  much  assistance,  got  through 
at  all.  Still,  there  is  no  mud,  and  the  road  has  one  advantage,  it 
being  perfectly  firm." 

Surely  no  fair-minded,  unprejudiced  person  can  read  these  two 
contemporaneous  accounts,  in  the  Wilkes  Narrative  and  in  Fre- 
mont's Rept.,  without  saying  that  they  are  substantially  the  same 
as  to  the  difficulties  of  the  26  miles  up  Burnt  River — the  real  diflS- 
culties  seem  to  have  been  in  the  first  14  miles,  as  the  third  day's 
travel  of  12  miles  indicates  a  fair  road. 

There  remains  to  be  considered  only  the  road  from  the  divide 


116  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

between  Burnt  and  Powder  Rivers  to  Grande  Ronde,  as  we  have 
already  discussed  the  43  miles  over  the  Blue  Mountains,  which  the 
migration  traveled,  and  the  somewhat  longer  route — just  how  much 
longer  we  cannot  determine,  as  the  "Table  of  Distance"  on  p.  292 
of  Fremont's  Rept.  omits  Oct.  23,  doubtless  by  printer's  mistake — 
which  Fremont  traveled  in  crossing  the  Blue  Mountains  by  the 
"much  easier  route"  of  which  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  oflScer  in 
charge  of  Fort  Boise  had  informed  him. 

Of  the  character  of  this  stretch  of  road  there  is  not  one  word  in 
"Old  Pioneer."  Wilkes  (pp.  86-7)  only  says  of  the  first  two  days 
after  leaving  Burnt  River  that  Sept.  28  "our  road  led  through  a 
beautiful  valley,"  Sept.  29  "we  left  the  plain  .  .  .  and  in  the 
middle  of  the  day  entered  another  valley." 

"Sept.  30.  Traveled  nine  miles  over  an  excellent  road,  with 
the  exception  of  the  last  half  mile,  which  was  rocky  and  perplexed; 
but  this  might  have  been  escaped,  as  we  afterward  found,  had  we 
turned  down  an  opening  to  our  right,  which  led  through  a  smooth 
and  easy  passage  directly  to  the  place  where  we  finally  encamped." 

We  have  already  shown  that  Fremont's  Rept.  fully  confirms 
Wilkes'  statement  under  date  of  Oct.  2,  that  they  might  have  avoided 
the  two  worst  hills  they  encountered  on  the  whole  route,  being 
those  by  which  they  descended  into  and  ascended  from  the  Grande 
Ronde,  by  keeping  around  on  the  side  of  the  mountain. 

Fremont's  record  of  precisely  this  same  stretch  of  road  from 
the  head  of  Burnt  River  to  the  edge  of  the  Grande  Ronde  is  on 
pp.  177-8  of  his  report,  as  follows :  "Oct.  15.  The  trail  did  not 
much  improve  until  we  had  crossed  the  dividing  grounds  between  the 
Brule  (Burnt)  and  Powder  Rivers.  .  .  .  From  the  dividing 
grounds  we  descended  by  a  mountain  road  to  Powder  River,  on  an 
old  bed  of  which  we  encamped." 

"Oct.  16.  .  .  .  We  made  today  but  a  short  journey  of  13 
miles,  the  road  being  very  good,  and  encamped  in  a  fine  bottom  of 
Powder  River." 

"Oct.  17.  .  .  .  We  traveled  this  morning  across  the  affluents 
to  Powder  River,  the  road  being  good,  firm  and  level ;  and  the  coun- 
try became  constantly  more  pleasant  and  interesting.  .  .  .  From 
the  waters  of  this  stream  the  road  ascended  by  a  good  and  moderate 
ascent  to  a  dividing  ridge,  but  immediately  entered  upon  ground 
covered  with  fragments  of  an  altered  siliceous  slate,  which  are  in 
many  places  large,  and  render  the  road  racking  to  a  carriage." 

All  else  that  Wilkes  says  about  the  road  beyond  Fort  Hall  to 
the  Valley  of  the  Columbia  is  the  following  (on  p.  88)  : 

"Let  me  remark  for  fear  that  I  may  overlook  it,  that  while  travel- 
ing on  the  Burnt  River,  and  while  passing  through  the  Blue  Moun- 
tains, we  had  much  trouble  in  finding  our  stock  in  the  morning,  as 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  117 

they  wandered  off  in  the  bushes  during  the  night,  and  often  strayed 
out  among  the  hills  after  the  bunch  grass.  We  found  the  road  along 
this  river,  and  through  these  mountains,  the  worst  of  the  whole 
route,  and  indeed,  nearly  all  the  bad  road  we  saw  at  all.  Lieutenant 
Fremont,  who  came  behind  us,  and  who  had  Mr.  Fitzpatrick  for  a 
guide,  went  further  down  the  Grande  Ronde  to  the  right,  came  out 
at  a  different  point,  and  made  his  way  through  the  Blue  Mountains 
by  a  route  which  he  states  to  be  more  safe  and  easy  by  far  than  the 
one  by  which  we  came.  Our  route,  at  any  rate,  can  be  so  improved 
with  a  small  amount  of  labor  as  to  be  quite  practicable,  and  even 
as  it  was  we  came  through  it  with  our  wagons  in  perfect  safety, 
without  even  unloading  them  at  a  single  point.  Many,  if  not  most, 
of  the  bad  hills  we  had  passed  could  have  been  avoided  or  over- 
come with  a  very  little  labor." 

Every  candid  reader  having  before  him  in  this  all  that  is  said 
in  the  two  contemporaneous  accounts  of  the  Wilkes  Narrative  and 
Fremont's  Report,  and  also  all  that  Burnett  says  (in  "Old  Pioneer") 
about  the  quality  of  the  road  from  Fort  Boise  to  Grande  Ronde,  can 
see  for  himself  how  totally  unfounded  is  Prof.  Schafer's  persistent 
assertion  that  Wilkes  strove  to  mislead  the  public  as  to  the  diffi- 
culties of  this  portion  of  the  route  in  the  interest  of  his  railroad 
project — the  fact  being  that  Wilkes'  whole  purpose  was  to  convince 
his  readers  that  neither  he,  nor  any  of  his  political  or  personal 
friends,  nor  any  other  private  person  or  corporation,  should  be  per- 
mitted to  build,  own  or  operate  a  transcontinental  railroad,  but  that 
it  should  be  built  and  owned  and  operated  by  the  nation,  and  that 
he  almost  assumed  the  feasibility  of  the  route,  devoting  to  that  only 
about  1,200  words,  or  scarcely  one  per  cent,  of  his  book. 

I  think  his  scheme  was  visionary,  but  the  fact  that  it  was  one 
that  cut  off  all  possibility  of  private  gain  for  not  only  himself,  but 
all  others,  certainly  removed  from  his  mind  all  temptation  to  inten- 
tionally misrepresent  the  facts  concerning  the  feasibility  of  the  route. 

But  Prof.  Schafer,  having  started  out  with  the  erroneous  notion 
that  Wilkes'  purpose  was  to  prove  the  feasihility  of  the  route,  can- 
not consent  to  admit  his  mistake,  which  would  be  evident  to  all  his 
readers  if  he  would  only  quote  the  passages  in  which  Wilkes  himself 
states  his  ideas  about  '*a  national  railroad  across  the  continent." 
(Cf.  Wilkes  Preface,  p.  4,  and  Part  I.,  pp.  47  and  62,  and  especially 
the  passages  on  pp.  58-60,  beginning,  "There  are  many  and  insur- 
mountable reasons  why  it  should  be  a  national  undertaking,  and 
not  left  to  the  mercy  of  a  band  of  speculators,  w^hose  narrow  objects 
would  be  private  gain,"  and  ending  with  "lastly,  it  should  be 
national,  because  its  vast  revenues  would  not  only  enable  the  gov- 
ernment, after  paying  off  the  cost,  to  relieve  the  country  of  the  bur- 
den of  almost  every  tax,  whether  impost  or  otherwise,  but  afford  a 


118  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

surplus,  which  might  be  exijended  to  advantage  in  the  gradual  in- 
crease of  the  navy,  and  in  strengthening  our  seaboard  and  harbor 
defenses  to  a  state  amounting  to  impregnability.'') 

Never  once  alluding  in  his  discussions  of  the  Wilkes  Narrative 
to  this  thoroughly  unselfish  and  patriotic  (though  very  visionary) 
purpose  of  Wilkes  in  his  advocacy  of  a  ''national  railroad"  to  Ore- 
gon, Prof.  Schafer  calls  him  ''a  railroad  projector,"  and  character- 
izes his  "History  of  Oregon"  as  a  ''promoter's  pamphlet,  nothing 
more  nor  less,"  (Cf.  Orcgonian,  Nov.  13,  1903),  and  in  the  same 
paper  after  declaring  that  Wilkes  "at  all  points  shows  the  greatest 
concern  to  avoid  admitting  difficulties,  or  to  explain  them  away 
when  admitted,''  he  continues : 

'•The  following  quotations  will  illustrate  Wilkes'  method  of  deal- 
ing with  them : 

"  'On  the  24th  we  had  to  encounter  a  very  hilly  road,  which  re- 
tarded our  progress  most  seriously.  The  hills,  however,  were  not 
high,  neither  were  they  rugged  or  abrupt.'  "  Here  Prof.  Schafer  in- 
serts the  following  parenthetical  note:  ("so  as  not  to  interfere  with 
a  railroad"). 

Let  us  see  what  Fremont  says  of  this  same  succession  of  short 
hills  (p.  175)  : 

"The  road  entered  a  sandy  hollow,  where  the  surface  was  ren- 
dered firm  by  an  admixture  of  other  rock ;  being  good  and  level  until 
arriving  near  the  head  of  the  ravine,  where  it  became  a  little  rocky, 
and  we  met  with  a  number  of  sharp  ascents  over  an  undulating  sur- 
face." Surely  "a  number  of  sharp  ascents  over  an  undulating  sur- 
face" conveys  precisely  the  same  meaning  as  ''the  hills,  however, 
were  not  high,  neither  were  they  rugged  or  abrupt,"  and  doubtless 
Prof.  Schafer  would  not  venture  to  accuse  Fremont  "of  deliberately 
falsifying"  the  facts  about  the  difficulties  of  this  stretch  of  road. 

Prof.  Schafer  follows  this  with  what  has  been  hereinbefore 
quoted  from  Wilkes  as  to  the  road  up  Burnt  River,  and  as  to  all 
of  the  accounts  he  quotes  of  the  actual  difficulties  of  this,  the  worst 
road  of  the  whole  journey,  he  says:  ''So  far  Wilkes  may  be  giving 
us  a  free  rendering  of  Burnett."  Then  he  quotes  what  the  Wilkes 
account  says  about  the  possibility  of  avoiding  some  of  the  most 
obstructive  hills  and  hollows,  and  about  the  possibility  of  avoiding 
the  line  of  Burnt  Kiver  altogether,  as  heretofore  quoted  by  me,  and 
then  continues :  ''Here  is  an  evident  attempt  to  mislead  the  un- 
wary. While  Burnett  probably  suggested  that  the  road  could  be 
imiu'oved,  there  is  scarcely  a  possibility  that  he  should  have  hinted 
at  a  way  of  avoiding  the  valley  of  the  river.  Fremont,  who  followed 
the  emigrants,  used  the  road  they  made,  and  nowhere  intimates  the 
existence  of  another  possible  route.     I  am  personally  convinced  that 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  119 

Wilkes  had  not  the  slightest  authority  for  suggesting  a  new  route, 
or  for  the  note  asserting  its  existence." 

Could  determined  prejudice  go  farther  than  this? 

George  Wilkes  was  an  honorable  man  through  all  his  long  life — 
a  man  who  would  have  scorned  the  petty  deceptions  with  which 
Prof.  Schafer  accuses  him  and  concerning  which,  if  Prof.  Schafer 
would  have  only  quoted  Wilkes'  own  statements  of  his  interest  in  a 
national  railroad  to  Oregon,  everyone  would  see  at  once  that  he 
had  no  ''axe  to  grind"  nor  any  temptation  to  in  any  way  misstate 
the  difficulties  of  the  route. 

Considering  the  constant  efforts  to  find  easier  routes  as  exem- 
plified in  the  records  of  many  a  transcontinental  migration,  both  to 
Oregon  and  California,  what  conceivable  ground  is  there  for  the 
assertion  that  ''there  is  scarcely  a  possibility  that  Burnett  should 
have  hinted  at  a  way  of  avoiding  the  valley  of  this  river"  ? 

Pray,  why  did  it  not  occur  to  Prof.  Schafer  that  if  Wilkes  were 
such  an  unprincipled  knave  as  he  represents  him  to  be,  he  would 
have  avoided  all  necessity  of  a  footnote  by  altering  Burnett's  letter, 
and  simply  omitting  "but  if  this  should  not  be  the  case"? 

Prof.  Schafer  continues:  *'At  the  Grande  Ronde  the  case  is 
somewhat  different."  It  is  indeed  somewhat  different,  for  I  had 
quoted  from  Fremont  (Cf.  Oregonkin.,  Sept.  20,  1903),  the  passage 
which  proves  beyond  question  that  the  Wilkes  Narrative  is  exactly 
correct.  "He  had  the  authority  of  Fremont  for  declaring  that  the 
two  worst  hills  could  have  been  avoided,  and  it  is  even  possible 
that  Burnett  quotes  Fremont  here." 

On  this  it  is  enough  to  remark : 

First — That  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how  Burnett,  writing  in  Janu- 
ary, February  and  March,  1844,  a  full  year  before  Fremont's  Report 
of  this  expedition  was  published,  and  while  he  was  still  exploring 
in  the  present  states  of  California  and  Nevada,  could  have  "quoted 
Fremont  here." 

Second — That  it  is  certain  that  Burnett  did  not  even  obtain  this 
information  from  Fremont  orally,  while  with  him  Nov.  7  to  18,  1843 
("Old  Pioneer,"  pp.  130-13.5;  Fremont's  Report,  pp.  192-19.5),  be- 
cause, instead  of  crediting  Payette  with  furnishing  the  information 
about  the  easy  pass  over  the  Blue  Mountains,  as  Fremont's  Report 
does,  the  Wilkes  account  credits  it  to  the  fact  that  Fitzpatrick  was 
the  guide  to  Fremont's  party.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Fitzpatrick, 
though  guide  most  of  the  way,  not  only  was  not  with  Fremont's 
party  over  the  Blue  Mountains,  but  he  was  not  with  it  from  Sept. 
27,  1843—12  days  before  reaching  Fort  Boise— till  Nov.  21,  1843, 
three  days  after  Burnett  and  his  family,  and  Mr.  William  Gilpin 
had  started  from  the  Dalles  for  Fort  Vancouver,  in  the  boats  in 
which  Burnett  had  accompanied  Fremont  from  Vancouver  to  the 


120  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

Dalles,  as  witness  the  following  extracts  from  Fremont's  Report: 
"Sept.  27.  .  .  .  Our  progress  with  12  or  14  wheeled  carriages, 
though  light  and  made  for  the  purpose,  in  such  a  rocky  country  was 
extremely  slow;  and  I  again  determined  to  gain  time  by  a  division 
of  the  camp. 

''Accordingly,  today  the  parties  again  separated,  constituted 
very  much  as  before — Mr.  Fitzpatrick  remaining  in  charge  of  the 
heavier  baggage"  (p.  166).  .  .  Idem  (p.  197)  "Mr.  Fitzpatrick 
with  Mr.  Talbot  and  the  remainder  of  the  party  arrived  on  the 
21st"  (Nov.). 

Prof.  Schafer  continues  as  follows : 

"But  when  (p.  88)  Wilkes  dexterously  combines  the  Burnt  River 
stretch  with  the  Grande  Ronde  road,  and  uses  Fremont  to  prove 
the  feasibility  of  the  latter"  (he  probably  means  the  former,  W.  I. 
M.)  "he  is  clearly  trying  to  throw  dust  in  the  eyes  of  his  reader. 
He"  (Wilkes)  "says,  'We  found  the  road  along  this  river'  (i.  e., 
Burnt  River,  W.  I.  M.)  'and  through  these  mountains'  (Blue  Moun- 
tains) 'the  worst  of  the  whole  route,  and,  indeed,  nearly  all  the  bad 
road  we  saw  at  all.  Lieut.  Fremont,  who  came  behind  us,  and 
who  had  Mr.  Fitzpatrick  for  a  guide,  went  further  down  the  Grande 
Ronde  to  the  right,  came  out  at  a  different  point,  and  made  his  way 
through  the  Blue  Mountains  by  a  route  which  he  states  to  be  more 
safe  and  easy  by  far  than  the  one  by  which  we  came.  Our  route, 
at  any  rate,  can  be  so  improved  with  a  small  amount  of  labor  as  to 
be  quite  practicable,  and  even  as  it  was,  we  came  through  it  with 
our  wagons  in  perfect  safety,  without  even  unloading  them  at  a 
single  point.  Many,  if  not  most,  of  the  bad  hills  we  passed  could 
have  been  avoided  or  overcome,  with  a  very  little  labor.' 

"In  such  ways  as  these  Wilkes  tried  to  bolster  up  his  railroad 
scheme,  for  which  he  had  sad  need  of  support." 

"How  desperate  are  the  shifts  of  a  confirmed  theorist"  has  rarely 
received  so  strong  a  verification  as  in  this  attempt  by  Prof.  Schafer 
to  make  Wilkes  appear  a  dishonest  "railroad  promoter,"  deceiving 
the  public  by  this  perfectly  fair  statement  of  the  difficulties  of  the 
only  really  bad  stretches  of  road  they  had  found. 

Furthermore,  Wilkes  did  not,  "dexterously"  or  otherwise,  "com- 
bine the  Burnt  River  stretch  with  the  Grande  Ronde  road"  (for 
he  says  not  one  word  about  the  road  in  the  Grande  Ronde,  which 
was  a  level  prairie-like  valley),  but  with  the  road  over  the  Blue 
Mountains,  which  was  an  altogether  different  thing. 

How  completely  baseless  is  this  vision  which  Prof.  Schafer  has 
evolved  from  '"the  mysterious  depths  of  his  own  inner  conscious- 
ness," of  Wilkes  as  a  rascally  railroad  promoter,  striving  to  gull 
the  public  by  wickedly  altering  Burnett's  letters,  so  as  "to  minimize 
the  diflSculties  of  the  way,"  is  shown  not  only  by  what  has  been 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  121 

hereinbefore  quoted  as  to  the  disinterested  and  purely  patriotic 
aims  he  sought  to  advance  in  advocating  a  national  railroad  to  Ore- 
gon, and  by  the  comparison  of  what  he  says  of  the  diflflculties  of 
the  road  with  Fremont's  Report  of  it,  and  with  what  the  "Old 
Pioneer"  says  of  it;  but  also  by  the  fact  that  even  the  word  rail- 
road does  not  once  appear  in  the  50  pages,  or  nearly  40,000  words, 
of  his  "narrative  of  the  migration  of  1843,"  although  so  greatly  is 
the  usual  fairness  of  Prof.  Schafer's  mind  warped  by  this  curious 
theory  of  his  about  Wilkes,  that  he  actually  declares  {Oregonian, 
Nov.  13,  1903)  that  "the  very  next  sentence  reveals  him"  (Wilkes) 
"from  another  angle  as  the  railroad  projector."  That  next  sentence 
consists  of  the  following  mere  truisms  (the  italics  used  to  show 
"Wilkes  as  a  railroad  projector"  being  Prof.  Schafer's,  and  not 
Wilkes'),  viz:  "Liberty  and  enterprise  are  inseparable  qualities, 
and  icere  it  not  for  the  obstacles  of  inadequate  means  of  travel,  no 
corner  of  our  country  would  be  left  unpeopled." 

What  a  curious  state  of  mind  must  possess  one  who  finds  in 
this  simple  and  appropriate  statement  of  a  general  truth  proof  of 
the  wiles  of  a  "railroad  projector,"  seeking  to  deceive  the  people  of 
the  country  as  to  the  feasibility  of  a  transcontinental  railroad. 

Having  disposed  of  the  matters  of  the  real  diflSculties  of  the 
route  from  Fort  Hall  to  the  Columbia  and  of  the  extent  to  which 
Whitman  was  the  guide  of  the  1843  migration,  let  us  now  finish 
the  story  of  the  development  of  the  first  transcontinental  wagon 
road  with  an  examination  of  the  other  two  important  points,  which 
are,  What  was  the  treatment  of  the  migration  at  Fort  Hall?  and 
Would  it  have  gone  through  with  wagons  if  Whitman  had  not  been 
with  it?  These  are  so  closely  connected  that  it  is  best  to  consider 
them  together. 

The  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  all  allege 
that  at  Fort  Hall  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  chief  trader,  Mr.  Richard 
Grant,  contrived  to  frighten  all  parties  of  Americans  migrating  to 
Oregon  with  such  dreadful  stories  as  to  the  diflQculties  and  dangers 
of  the  route  from  there  to  the  Columbia,  and  the  absolute  impossi- 
bility of  getting  through  with  wagons,  that  they  all  prior  to  1843 
had  there  left  their  wagons,  and  that  he  tried  by  exaggerations  and 
misrepresentations  to  prevent  the  1843  migration  from  going  on 
with  wagons,  and  would  have  succeeded  had  not  \\Tiitman  been 
there  and  made  them  a  speech,  which  alleged  speech  most  of  the 
advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  print  in  quotation 
marks  (as  if  its  authenticity  is  undoubted).  (Cf.  for  this,  "Spald- 
ing's Lecture,"  in  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  No.  37,  41st  Cong.,  3d  Sess,  p.  21; 
Barrow's  "Oregon,"  pp.  166-7  and  247-8;  Gray's  "History  of  Ore- 
gon," p.  289 ;  Nixon's  "How  Marcus  Whitman  Saved  Oregon,"  pp. 
140-41;  Craighead's  "Story  of  Marcus  Whitman,"  p.  76;  Mrs.  Eva 


122  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

Emery  Dye's  ''McLoughlin  and  Old  Oregon,''  pp.  253-4 ;  M.  Eell's 
"Indian  Missions/'  pp.  156  and  177-8;  Mowry's  ''Marcus  Whitman," 
p.  205.)  All  of  these  give  substantially'  the  same  account  of  what 
they  allege  took  i)lace  at  Fort  Hall,  but  no  one  of  them  quotes  a 
single  contemporaneous  book,  government  document,  newspaper  or 
magazine  article,  letter  or  diary  in  support  of  this  story,  which 
a[>pears  first,  as  far  as  has  yet  been  discovered,  in  the  two  recently 
found  letters  written  in  1858  and  1859  by  Rev.  Geo.  Atkinson,  a 
man  who  had  never  been  within  400  miles  of  Fort  Hall,  having 
gone  to  Oregon  by  sea,  after  the  Whitman  massacre.  These  two 
letters  contain  the  first  two  versions  (so  far  as  known)  of  the 
Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story,  but  the  first  or  1858  version  was 
so  palpably  false  that  the  1859  one  dropped  several  of  the  lead- 
ing and  easily  proved  false  statements  of  the  first.  These  letters 
are  herein  printed  for  the  first  time.     (Cf.  Part  II.,  Chapter  III.) 

False  and  widely  variant  as  are  both  these  versions  of  the  Whit- 
man Saved  Oregon  Story,  they  are  admittedly  derived  from  Rev. 
H.  n.  Spalding  and  Rev.  C.  Eells.  In  their  anxiety  to  make  a 
strong  case  against  Grant,  Barrows  (pp.  166-7  and  247-8),  and 
Nixon  (})}).  110  and  139-41),  represent  him  as  having  been  in 
charge  of  Fort  Hall  from  1836  onward,  and  as  having  striven  to 
prevent  Whitman  from  taking  his  wagon  beyond  Fort  Hall  in 
1836,  and  as  having  prevented  all  others  in  later  years  from  going 
with  wagons  beyond  Fort  Hall,  whereas,  the  fact  is,  that  he  was 
not  at  Fort  Hall  till  after  the  migration  of  1841  had  passed  there, 
so  that  but  one  migration — that  of  1842 — had  ever  passed  Fort 
Hall  after  Grant  had  charge  of  it  until  the  1843  migration  reached 
it. 

Mrs.  Whitman's  Diary  (Tr.  Oregon  Pioneer  Association,  1891, 
p.  46)  says  (speaking  of  the  arrival  and  reception  of  the  Whitman- 
Spalding  party  at  Fort  Hall  on  August  3,  1836,  a  little  after  noon)  : 
"We  were  hospitably  entertained  by  Capt.  Thing,  who  keeps  the 
fort."  This  should  be  Thyng.  He  was  one  of  Wyeth's  1834  party, 
and  was  left  in  charge  of  Fort  Hall  by  Wyeth,  on  its  erection  in 
1834.  (Cf.  Lee  and  Frost's  Ten  Years  in  Oregon,  p.  114.)  Who 
was  in  charge  of  Fort  Hall  in  1837  I  have  been  unable  certainly 
to  determine,  but  think  Mr.  Thyng  continued  in  command  there 
till  Ermatinger  was  sent  to  take  charge,  which  was  certainly  as 
early  as  1838,  as  witness  the  following  extracts  from  Mrs.  C.  Eells' 
diary  (in  Trans.  Oregon  Pioneer  Association  for  1889,  p.  83)  : 
"Friday,  July  27th,  1838,  arrive  at  Fort  Hall  .  .  .  Sunday, 
July  20th,  about  10  o'clock,  Mr.  Ermatinger  comes  to  invite  us  to 
breakfast,  says  he  has  just  got  up.  After  breakfast  he  comes  again 
to  invite  us  to  have  preaching  at  the  fort.  Afternoon  Mr.  Eells 
preached  in  the  dining  room     .     .     .     Tuesday,  July  31,  find  our 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  123 

provisions  and  four  mules  and  one  fresh  horse  sent  by  Dr.  Whit- 
man and  Spalding.  Ermatinger  gives  ten  pounds  sugar."  While 
there  is  here  no  explicit  assertion  that  he  was  in  command,  the 
inference  that  he  was  in  charge  is  irresistible. 

That  Frederick  Ermatinger  was  in  command  at  Fort  Hall  in 
1839  is  distinctly  stated  by  Farnham  (Travels,  p.  153),  (under 
date  of  September  27th,  when  he  was  at  Whitman's  Mission),  as 
follows:  "In  the  afternoon  the  arrival  of  Mr.  Ermetinger  (should 
be  ma  instead  of  me,  W.  I.  M.)  the  senior  clerk  at  Fort  Hall  from 
Fort  Walla  Walla,  created  quite  a  sensation.  His  uniform  kind- 
ness to  the  missionaries  has  endeared  him  to  them."  .  .  ''28th 
Mr.  Ermatinger  started  for  Fort  Hall."  While  Ermatinger  was 
absent  from  Fort  Hall  on  this  trip  to  Vancouver,  Farnham's  party 
had  arrived  at  Fort  Hall,  on  September  1st,  and  had  been  most 
kindly  received  there,  as  every  other  party  of  Americans  was  who 
ever  were  at  Fort  Hall  on  their  way  to  Oregon,  as  long  as  it  was 
a  Hudson's  Bay  Company's  post,  according  to  all  the  contemporary 
letters,  and  diaries,  and  books,  and  reports  to  the  government  of 
all  the  members  and  leaders  of  those  parties  who  have  left  any  con- 
temporaneous written  or  printed  record  of  their  reception  and 
treatment  at  Fort  Hall.  Mr.  Walker,  an  American,  was  tempo- 
rarily in  charge  of  Fort  Hall  while  Ermatinger  was  on  this  trip, 
and  Farnham  (Travels,  p.  13G)  says:  "We  spent  the  2d  and  3d 
most  agreeably  with  Mr.  Walker  in  his  hospitable  adobie  castle, 
exchanged  with  him  our  wearied  horses  for  fresh  ones,  and  ob- 
tained dried  buffalo  meat,  sugar,  cocoa,  tea  and  corn  meal,  a  guide 
and  every  other  necessary  within  that  gentleman's  power  to  fur- 
nish for  our  journey  to  Walla  Walla;  "and  at  10  o'clock  a.  m.,  of 
the  4th  of  September,  bade  adieu  to  our  very  obliging  country- 
man." That  Ermatinger  was  in  charge  of  Fort  Hall  in  1840  is  evi- 
dent from  the  account  of  the  outfitting  there  of  three  wagons  by 
Newell,  Wilkins,  Meek  and  Ermatinger  himself  in  August,  1840, 
and  the  driving  them  through  from  there  to  Fort  Walla  Walla. 
(Cf.  Tr.  Oregon  Pioneer  Association,  1877,  p.  22,  also  pp.  85-87 
ante). 

That  Ermatinger  was  in  command  there  when  the  1841  migra- 
tion passed  there,  and  received  and  treated  them  with  utmost  kind- 
ness, is  distinctly  asserted  by  the  famous  Father  P.  J.  De  Smet, 
who  was  of  that  party,  as  follows: 

(Under  date  of  August  16,  1841)  "But  I  feel  bound  before  all 
to  pay  Mr.  Ermatinger,  the  captain  of  Fort  Hall,  the  tribute  of 
gratitude  which  we  owe  him.  Although  a  Protestant  by  birth,  this 
noble  Englishman  gave  us  a  most  friendly  reception.  Not  only  did 
he  repeatedly  invite  us  to  his  table,  and  sell  us,  at  first  cost,  or  at 
one-third  of  its  value  in  a  country  so  remote,  whatever  we  required. 


124  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

but  he  also  added  as  a  pure  gift  many  articles  which  he  believed 
would  be  particularly  acceptable,"  (Cf.  ^'Letters  and  Sketches, 
etc.,"  P.  J.  De  Smet,  S.  J.,  Philadelphia,  1853.) 

We  have  already  quoted  (on  pp.  90-94  ante)  the  strictly  con- 
temporary evidence  of  White's  report  to  the  government  as  Sub- 
Indian  agent,  dated  April  1,  1843,  and  his  ''Ten  Years  in  Oregon" 
(Ithaca,  N.  Y.,  1848),  and  L.  W.  Basting's  "Emigrant's  Guide  to 
Oregon  and  California"  (Cincinnati,  1845),  and  of  Fremont's  Re- 
port of  his  1842  expedition,  and  of  Hon.  Medorem  Crawford's  ad- 
dress, as  president  of  the  Oregon  Pioneer  Association  at  its  1881 
meeting  (the  latter  contemporaneous  because  based  on  and  strictly 
agreeing  in  all  its  facts  with  his  Journal,  since  published  verbatim 
by  the  Oregon  Historical  Society)  that  this  1842  migration — the 
first  large  overland  migration — were  received  with  the  utmost  kind- 
ness at  Fort  Hall,  and  furnished  with  flour  at  only  one-half  of  what 
the  American  traders  had  charged  them  at  Fort  Laramie. 

Whether  Spalding  or  Gray  first  invented  these  charges  against 
Grant  will  probably  never  be  known,  but  it  is  certain  that  they  have 
never  been  found  in  print,  or  in  unpublished  letters  or  diaries  till 
after  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  began  to  be  circulated,  and 
Gray  is  chiefly  responsible  for  their  wide  circulation,  by  publishing 
them  in  his  History  of  Oregon  (1870),  as  follows: 

Page  321.  ''Grant  at  Fort  Hall  with  the  Indians  along  the  route 
had  combined  to  deceive  and  rob  the  naked  and  starving  immi- 
grants." 

Page  521.  "So  far  as  McBean  was  concerned,  he  obeyed  orders 
as  implicitly  as  Grant  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  did,  when  lie  sent 
forty  families  in  1846  into  the  mountains  of  California  to  perish  in 
the  snow  with  cold  and  hunger/'  The  italics  are  Gray's.  (This 
relates  to  the  Donner  party,  who  were  never  within  hundreds  of 
miles  of  Fort  Hall,  they  having  left  the  regular  Oregon  trail  on  the 
Little  Sandy  tributary  of  Greeu  River,  to  go  via  Bridger's  Fort  and 
the  Hastings'  Cut-Off,  south  of  the  Great  Salt  Lake,  directly  to  Cali-. 
fornia.  [Cf.  in  Trans.  Oregon  Pioneer  Association,  1878;  address 
of  Hon.  J.  C.  Thornton  on  the  migration  of  184G,  p.  51 ;  also  Thorn- 
ton's "Oregon  and  California,"  Vol.  II.,  pp.  95-240.]  The  last  named 
is  the  best  and  fullest  account  of  the  Donner  party.)  It  is  certain, 
therefore  that  for  the  dreadful  fate  which  befell  the  Donner  party 
neither  Grant  nor  any  other  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  employe  was  any 
more  responsible  than  "the  man  in  the  moon"  was,  or  than  Gray 
himself  was.  (Had  that  party  gone  by  Fort  Hall  they  doubtless 
would  have  reached  California  safely,  as  did  all  of  the  other  Cali- 
fornia emigrants  that  year  who  declined  to  go  with  them  by  Hast- 
ings' Cut-Off,  and  went  by  Fort  Hall ;  and  all  the  authorities  are 
agreed  that  it  was  the  time  the  Donner  party  lost  finding  and  mak- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  125 

ing  a  new  road  between  where  they  left  the  Oregon  trail,  in  Green 
River  Valley,  and  the  time  they  reached  the  eastern  base  of  the 
Sierra  Nevadas,  which  caused  them  to  be  too  late  to  cross  the 
Sierras.    W.  I.  M.) 

Page  360.  Speaking  explicitly  of  the  1843  migration,  he  says: 
"An  immigration  of  875  persons  arrived  in  the  fall,  notwithstanding 
that  deceitful  servant  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  Grant,  at  Fort  Hall, 
did  all  he  could  under  the  instructions  of  the  company  to  induce  as 
many  as  possible  to  go  to  California,  by  telling  them  all  the  fright- 
ful stories  he  and  his  men  could  invent  of  their  danger,  and  of  the 
difficulties  they  must  encounter  in  getting  through  to  the  settlements 
on  the  Wallamet." 

Page  367.  ''Grant,  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  must  occupy  Fort 
Hall,  and  do  all  he  can  to  turn  immigrants  to  California,  and  rob 
such  as  persist  in  coming  to  Oregon.  General  Palmer  says  in  his 
journal  (p.  43)  :  "While  we  remained  at  this  place  (Fort  Hall) 
great  efforts  were  made  to  induce  the  immigration  to  pursue  the 
route  to  California.  The  most  extravagant  tales  were  related  re- 
specting the  dangers  awaiting  a  trip  to  Oregon,  and  the  difficulties 
and  trials  to  be  surmounted.  The  perils  of  the  way  were  so  magni- 
fied as  to  make  us  suppose  the  journey  to  Oregon  almost  impossible. 
For  instance  the  two  crossings  of  Snake  River,  and  the  crossings 
of  the  Columbia  and  other  smaller  streams  were  represented  as 
being  attended  with  great  danger.  Also,  that  no  company  hereto- 
fore attempting  the  passage  of  these  streams  succeeded  but  with 
the  loss  of  men,  from  the  violence  and  rapidity  of  the  current,  as 
also  that  they  had  never  succeeded  in  getting  more  than  fifteen  or 
twenty  head  of  cattle  into  the  Willamet  Valley. 

"In  addition  to  the  above,  it  was  asserted  that  three  or  four 
tribes  of  Indians  in  the  middle  regions  had  combined  for  the  pur- 
pose of  prevejiting  our  passage  through  their  country.  In  case  we 
escaped  destruction  at  the  hands  of  the  savages,  that  a  more  fearful 
enemy — famine — would  overtake  us  before  making  the  Cascade 
Mountains.  On  the  other  hand,  as  an  inducement  to  pursue  the 
California  route,  we  were  informed  of  the  shortness  of  the  route 
when  compared  with  that  to  Oregon,  as  also  of  the  many  other 
superior  advantages  it  possessed."  The  italics  in  this  quotation 
are  Gray's,  not  Palmer's.  Although  Gray  knew  perfectly  well  that 
Palmer  never  was  at  Fort  Hall  till  1845,  and  although  the  title  page 
to  Palmer's  book  is  "Journal  of  Travels  over  the  Rocky  Mountains  to 
the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  River  in  the  years  1845  and  1846,"  he  not 
only  here  gives  his  readers  no  hint  of  the  date,  but  nowhere  in  his 
"History  of  Oregon"  gives  the  date  of  Palmer's  first  overland  jour- 
ney, and  he  prints  the  above  quotation  in  such  connection  that  all 
except  those  tolerably  well  acquainted  with  Oregon  history  are  sure 


126  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

to  suppose  that  Palmer  was  with  the  1842  or  1843  migration.  Nat- 
urally, Rev.  William  Barrows,  O.  W.  Nixon  and  Rev.  Myron  Eells 
fell  into  this  trap.  Barrows  (p.  148)  printing  the  above  quotation 
between  two  paragraphs  relating  to  the  1842  migration  (though  not 
asserting  that  it  related  to  that  migration),  and  Nixon  (p.  191) 
beginning  a  condensation  of  the  above  quotation  with  "General 
Palmer,  in  speaking  of  this,  says,  'While  at  Fort  Hall  in  1842  the 
perils  of  the  way  to  Oregon  were  so  maguifledV'  etc. ;  and  Rev.  M. 
Eells  (''Indian  ]\[issious,"  p.  177)  in  the  middle  of  his  account  of 
the  1843  migration,  introducing  this  quotation  with  "  'For  instance,' 
says  General  Joel  Palmer,  of  that  year's  emigration,"  and  this 
though  he  had  in  his  house  the  Trans.  Oregon  Pioneer  Association 
for  1877,  giving  an  alphabetical  roster  of  the  members  of  the  asso- 
ciation, which  states  that  Palmer  was  a  pioneer  of  1845.  The  result 
has  been  that  all  giving  credence  to  these  books  think  that  there  is  a 
strictly  contemporaneous  account  from  a  man  of  the  highest  char- 
acter, sustaining  the  accusation  that  the  1842  and  1843  migration 
(and,  presumably,  if  either,  then  both  of  them)  encountered  decep- 
tion and  misrepresentation  from  Grant,  evidencing  opposition  from 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  wagons  going  beyond  Fort  Hall.  Finding 
some  twenty  years  ago  that  this  was  in  1845,  I  became  suspicious 
that  somehow  the  quotation  must  be  otherwise  dishonest,  as  Grant 
w^as  admittedly  an  able  man,  and  it  seemed  to  me  utterly  incredible 
that  after  the  two  great  migrations  of  1843  and  1844  had  gone 
through  with  their  wagons,  even  if  he  was  as  bad  a  man  as  Gray 
claimed,  he  should  be  foolish  enough  to  try  to  deceive  this  1845 
migration  with  the  statement  that  they  could  not  easily  and  safely 
go  where  more  than  2,000  of  their  countrymen  had  gone,  and  had 
reported  far  and  wide  in  the  States  that  the  road  was  plainly 
marked  and  offered  little  difficulty. 

At  the  earliest  possible  opportunity,  therefore,  I  examined 
Palmer's  Journal  (which  is  a  rare  book),  and  found  that  this  is  a 
sample  of  that  kind  of  misquotation — as  ancient  as  it  is  disrep- 
utable— which  consists  in  stopping  a  quotation  when  the  imme- 
diately following  context  completely  changes  the  impression  con- 
veyed by  the  part  quoted.  The  next  paragraph  in  Palmer's  Journal 
after  the  above  quotation  from  it  is  as  follows:  "These  tales,  told 
and  rehearsed,  were  likely  to  produce  the  effect  of  turning  the  tide 
of  emigration  thither"  (/.  e.,  to  California).  Mr.  Greenwood,  an 
old  mountaineer,  well  stocked  with  falsehoods,  had  been  dispatched 
from  California  to  pilot  the  emigration  through,  and  assisted  by  a 
young  man  by  the  name  of  McDougal,  from  Indiana,  so  far  suc- 
ceeded as  to  induce  35  or  3C  wagons  to  take  that  trail ;  about  15 
wagons  had  been  fitted  out  expressly  for  California,  and  joined  by 
the  aforementioned,  completed  a  train  of  50  w^agons.     What  the 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  127 

result  of  their  expedition  has  been  I  have  not  been  able  to  learn." 
There  is  not  one  sentence  in  Palmer's  Journal  which,  honestly 
quoted  in  connection  with  its  context,  furnishes  the  least  support  to 
the  charges  of  Gray  against  Grant,  nor  to  any  charge  that  the  treat- 
ment of  Americans  migrating  to  Oregon  was  unkind  or  uncourteous 
either  at  Fort  Hall  or  at  any  other  Hudson's  Bay  Go.  post,  nor  one 
sentence  censuring  Grant  for  anything  whatever,  and  what  little 
he  says  of  Grant  is  entirely  favorable  to  and  commendatory  of  him. 

Having  shown  from  the  contemporaneous  records  of  Fremont, 
White,  Hastings  and  Crawford  how  the  1842  migration  came  to 
leave  part  of  their  wagons  at  Fort  Laramie,  part  at  Green  River, 
and  the  last  seven  at  Fort  Hall,  and  that  they  had  only  words  of 
praise  for  Grant  and  his  treatment  of  them,  and  having  by  quoting 
the  immediate  context  disproved  the  claim  that  Palmer's  Journal 
supports  the  charge  that  Grant  attempted  to  prevent  Americans 
from  going  beyond  Fort  Hall  with  wagons,  and  sought  to  send  them 
to  California,  we  are  now  prepared  to  examine  the  question  of  what 
treatment  the  1843  migration  met  at  Fort  Hall. 

Burnett's  letters,  as  printed  in  Part  II.  of  Wilkes,  furnish  as 
far  as  yet  appears  the  only  strictly  contemporaneous  account  of  their 
reception  and  treatment  by  Grant,  as  follows:  "We  arrived  in 
the  afternoon  at  Fort  Hall,  a  trading  post  belonging  to  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.,  on  the  Snake  or  Saptin  River,  and  encamped  in  a  fine 
piece  of  timber  land,  under  cover  of  its  wooden  battlements.  We 
passed  a  most  pleasant  evening,  in  exchanging  civilities  with  its 
inmates,  who  were  not  a  little  surprised  at  this  tremendous  irrup- 
tion in  their  solitude.  Some  of  the  members  told  us  that  they  could 
scarcely  believe  their  eyes  when  they  saw  the  immense  stretch  of 
our  line,  the  number  of  our  lowing  herds  and  our  squads  of  prancing 
horsemen,  and  they  inquired  laughingly  if  we  had  come  to  conquer 
Oregon  or  devour  it  out  of  hand.  They  treated  us,  however,  with 
every  attention,  and  answered  with  the  utmost  patience,  and  par- 
ticularly all  our  inquiries  in  relation  to  the  country.  We  paused 
here  a  day  to  recruit  our  cattle,  and  when  we  set  out  in  the  morning 
following  (1st  Sept.)  we  received  a  parting  salute  from  one  of  the 
guns  of  the  fort,  and  answered  it  with  a  volley  from  our  small 
arms." 

Since  the  foregoing  was  written  in  the  Oregonian  of  Nov.  13, 
1903,  Prof.  Schafer  has  printed  a  few  extracts  from  Burnett's  Jour- 
nal recently  obtained  from  the  Burnett  family  by  Prof.  Young,  sec- 
retary of  the  Oregon  Historical  Society,  as  follows : 

"27th  (Aug.).  Came  to  Fort  Hall.  This  being  Sunday,  no 
business  was  done.  Mr.  Grant  very  hospitable.  Fort  Hall  stands 
in  a  wide  plain  of  bottom  land  formed  by  Snake  River.     The  com- 


128  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

pany  have  a  great  many  horses  and  cattle,  made  by  trading,  etc., 
and  good  range. 

"28th.  Remained  at  Fort  Hall  and  many  trades  were  made. 
Price  of  provisions :  Flour,  25c  a  pint ;  coffee,  50c  a  pound ;  sugar, 
25c  a  pint;  rice,  33  l-3c;  for  powder,  5Gc  a  pound. 

"29th.     Still  remained  at  Fort  Hall. 

"30th.  Left  Fort  Hall  and  came  11  miles  to  the  Portneuth 
(neuf).    Good  range,  wood  and  water." 

These  extracts,  like  those  hereinbefore  quoted  by  me,  show  how 
very  "concise"  was  this  journal ;  but,  as  far  as  it  goes,  its  state- 
ment about  the  treatment  this  immigration  received  from  Mr.  Grant 
fully  supports  the  statements  in  the  Wilkes  Narrative. 

So  far  as  yet  appears,  no  other  contemporaneous  evidence  has 
been  found  in  support  of  the  accuracy  of  this  extract  from  Burnett's 
Journal,  but  this  statement  in  Gilmore's  letter  of  Nov.  11,  1843: 
"We  found  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  at  all  their  posts  very  accommo- 
dating" (Cf.  0}\  Hist.  Quarterly,  Sept.,  1903,  p.  281)  except  the  very 
strong  negative  evidence,  that  not  a  sentence  has  yet  been  discov- 
ered in  any  contemporaneous  letter  from  that  migration  which  in 
any  manner  censures  Grant's  conduct,  or  complains  of  any  treat- 
ment the  migration  received  at  Fort  Hall,  and  it  is  quite  incredible 
that  if  this  account  were  not  a  correct  one  of  the  treatment  they 
received  there,  some  one  or  more  of  this  migration  would  not  have 
complained  of  wrongs  inflicted  and  that  the  first  accusation  against 
Grant's  treatment  of  this  migration  should  appear  in  a  letter  writ- 
ten 15  years  afterward,  not  by  any  member  of  this  or  any  other 
migration  that  was  ever  at  Fort  Hall,  but  by  Rev.  G.  H.  Atkinson,  a 
Congregational  clergyman,  who  was  in  1843  a  youth  at  school  in 
New  England,  and  never  went  to  Oregon  till  the  summer  of  1848, 
and  then  by  sea,  and  whose  ideas  were  plainly  derived  from  Spald- 
ing, and  Gray,  and  C.  Eells. 

Having  settled  that  the  use  made  by  Gray,  Rev.  William  Bar- 
rows, Rev.  M.  Eells  and  others  of  the  quotation  from  Palmer's  Jour- 
nal was  deceptive,  and  that  it  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  1842  or 
1843  migration,  as  far  back  as  1884,  failing  to  find  any  contempo- 
raneous evidence  of  the  experience  of  the  1843  migration  at  Fort 
Hall,  except  that  in  the  Wilkes  Narrative,  in  accordance  with  the 
fundamental  principles  of  scientific  historical  investigation,  I  sought 
the  next  best  evidence,  to-wit,  the  carefully  considered  subsequent 
statements,  not  of  the  boys  like  William  Waldo,  P.  B.  Whitman, 
John  Hobson  and  John  Zachary,  who  were  in  that  migration,  nor 
of  other  people  in  it,  who,  however  honest  and  well  intentioned  they 
might  have  been,  were  not  its  leaders,  and  so  had  no  sense  of  respon- 
sibility for  its  movements  to  impress  upon  their  memories  what  took 
place  there,  nor  were  likely  to  have  come  directly  in  contact  with 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  129 

Captain  Grant  as  the  leaders  of  the  party  did,  but  from  the  five 
survivors  of  the  six  men  who  are  universally  admitted  to  have  been 
the  real  originators,  organizers  and  leaders  of  that  migration,  to-wit : 
Hon.  J.  M.  Shively,  the  three  Applegates,  Jesse,  Charles  and  Lind- 
say ;  Gov.  P.  H.  Burnett  and  Hon.  J.  W.  Nesmith.  Of  these  Charles 
Applegate  died  in  1877,  before  any  thorough  investigation  of  the 
Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  was  made,  and,  unfortunately,  I  did 
not  learn  of  Mr.  Nesmith's  address  in  time  for  my  letter  to  reach 
him  till  after  he  was  attacked  with  the  softening  of  the  brain  that 
clouded  the  last  few  months  of  his  long  and  honorable  life,  so  that  I 
never  heard  from  him.  Nesmith,  in  his  address  to  the  Oregon  Pio- 
neer Association  (Trans.  1875,  p.  47),  gives  the  following  account  of 
what  took  place  at  Fort  Hall  (but  with  no  claim  that  he  had  any 
contemporaneous  written  account  of  it  to  assist  or  refresh  his  mem- 
ory as  to  what  happened  32  years  before)  :  "Captain  Grant,  then 
in  charge  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  at  Fort  Hall,  endeavored  to  dis- 
suade us  from  proceeding  further  with  our  wagons,  and  showed 
us  the  wagons  that  the  emigrants  of  the  preceding  year  had  aban- 
doned as  an  evidence  of  the  impracticability  of  our  determination. 
Dr.  Whitman  was  persistent  in  his  assertions  that  wagons  could 
proceed  as  far  as  the  Grand  Dalles  of  the  Columbia  River,  from 
which  point  he  asserted  they  could  be  taken  down  by  rafts  or  bat- 
teaux  to  the  Willamette  Valley,  while  the  stock  could  be  driven  by 
an  Indian  trail  over  the  Cascade  Mountains,  near  Mount  Hood.  Hap- 
pily, Whitman's  advice  prevailed,  and  a  large  number  of  the  wagons, 
with  a  portion  of  the  stock,  did  reach  Walla  Walla  and  the  Dalles, 
from  which  points  they  were  taken  to  the  Willamette  the  following 
year.  Had  we  followed  Grant's  advice  and  abandoned  the  cattle 
and  wagons  at  Fort  Hall,  much  suffering  must  have  ensued,  as  a 
sufficient  number  of  horses  to  carry  the  women  and  children  of 
the  party  could  not  have  been  obtained,  besides  wagons  and  cattle 
were  indispensable  to  men  expecting  to  live  by  farming  in  a  country 
destitute  of  such  articles."  There  is  nothing  in  this  at  all  contrary 
to  what  is  stated  in  the  Wilkes  Narrative.  No  one  even  moderately 
acquainted  with  the  true  story  of  that  1843  migration  has  ever 
doubted  that  at  Fort  Hall  there  was  a  discussion  as  to  the  advisa- 
bility of  wagons  going  farther,  nor  that  Grant  thought  it  doubtful 
if  they  could  get  them  across  the  Blue  Mountains,  and  that  Whit- 
man thought  they  could.  The  only  question  is,  was  this  an  honest 
opinion  of  Grant,  and  was  he  candid  in  stating  it?  and  upon  that 
point  the  evidence  here  adduced  is  overwhelmingly  and  unanswer- 
ably in  favor  of  Grant,  nor  has  any  other  opinion  been  found  written 
in  letter  or  diary  till  some  15  years  after  the  event,  when  it  became 
necessary,  as  an  indispensable  postulate  of  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  Story,  to  create  the  impression  that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 


130  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

was  opposed  to  wagons  goiug  beyoud  Fort  Hall,  and  that  Grant 
wrongfully  strove  to  prevent  them  from  going  on.  This  correspond- 
ence with  Burnett,  Shively,  Jesse  and  Lindsay  Applegate  began  in 
1884,  a  dozen  years  before  1  began  an  investigation  of  the  ^Vilkes 
Narrative,  and  before  I  paid  any  attention  to  that  narrative  Gov. 
Burnett  had  died,  which  explains  why  I  did  not  obtain  any  state- 
ment from  him  as  to  the  authorship  of  that  narrative  and  the 
faithfulness  with  which  it  reproduced  his  letters  to  the  Herald. 
I  put  to  each  of  these  four  men  very  definite  and  comprehensive 
questions  as  to  Whitman's  true  relations  to  the  migration  gener- 
ally, and  as  to  what  actually  took  place  at  Fort  Hall,  and  the  fol- 
lowing are  their  replies. 

Oct.  14,  1884,  Gov.  P.  H.  Burnett  wrote  me  as  follows : 

"In  answer  to  your  first  question  I  will  say  that,  basing  my 
judgment  upon  my  individual  knowledge  of  the  conduct  and  lan- 
guage of  Captain  Grant,  and  also  upon  what  I  heard  from  reliable 
persons  at  Fort  Hall  in  1843,  I  do  not  believe  that  he  made  any 
efl:orts  to  prevent  the  emigration  of  1843  from  going  through  to 
Oregon  by  exaggerating  the  difliculties  of  the  remainder  of  the 
journey  or  by  attempting  to  persuade  them  to  go  to  California  in- 
stead of  to  Oregon." 

*'In  answer  to  your  second  inquiry,  I  have  to  state  that,  found- 
ing my  opinions  upon  the  circumstances  above  mentioned.  Captain 
Grant  did  not  strive  to  prevent  the  emigrants  from  going  farther 
with  wagons  by  any  statements  of  the  difliculties  of  the  way  which 
I,  as  I  subsequently  passed  over  it,  deemed  exaggerated.  While  at 
Fort  Hall,  in  1843,  I  neither  saw  nor  heard  of  anything  objection- 
able in  the  conduct  or  language  of  Captain  Grant,  then  in  charge  of 
that  post.  He  seemed  to  speak  and  act  with  candor  and  with 
reasonable  caution  under  all  the  then  existing  circumstances." 

April  14,  1887,  Gov.  Burnett,  in  answer  to  my  question,  "Who, 
if  anyone,  in  the  migration  of  1843,  so  far  as  you  know,  was  in- 
duced to  join  it  by  Dr.  Whitman?"  replied  as  follows:  ''I  have  no. 
present  recollection  of  any  person  who  was  induced  to  join  that 
migration  by  Dr.  Whitman." 

Hon.  J.  M.  Shively  wrote  me  from  Astoria,  Ore.,  Oct.  20,  1884, 
that  in  the  autumn  of  1842  he  was  living  in  St.  Louis,  and  decided 
to  try  and  organize  a  migration  to  Oregon  for  1843,  and  had  hand- 
bills printed  and  posted  and  held  several  public  meetings,  and  had 
a  list  of  about  300  names  of  those  who  agreed  to  join  the  party. 
That  at  the  request  of  the  party  he  took  a  petition  to  Congress  ask- 
ing for  military  protection  at  least  through  the  Pawnee  country, 
being  furnished  with  letters  from  leading  men  in  St.  Louis  to  many 
members  of  Congress. 

En  route  to  Washington  he  held  public  meetings  at  Louisville, 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  131 

Cincinnati  and  Pittsburg,  on  the  subject  of  migrating  to  Oregon. 
He  did  not  give  the  precise  date  when  he  reached  Washington,  but 
says  he  left  only  a  few  days  before  Congress  adjourned  and  returned 
to  St.  Louis. 

He  says :  ''I  was  received  in  Washington  with  marked  defer- 
ence, but  failed  to  get  the  desired  escort  of  troops.  I  had  a  number 
of  conferences  with  Mr.  Spencer,  then  Secretary  of  War,  and  Presi- 
dent Tyler  and  many  other  executive  ofBcers,  and  Senators  Linn 
and  Benton  and  Caleb  Cushing,  but  none  of  them  ever  mentioned 
Dr.  Whitman  to  me,  and  I  never  saw  nor  heard  of  him  until  he  over- 
took the  migration  on  the  plains.  .  .  .  The  party  was  made  up 
of  hardy  frontiersmen,  and  anything  Grant  might  say  on  one  side  or 
Whitman  on  the  other  would  not  have  deterred  or  encouraged  them. 
They  had  started  to  take  their  wagons  and  stock  through,  and 
they  did. 

''I  heard  a  number  ask  Captain  Grant  at  Fort  Hall  about  the 
route  down  Snake  River.  His  reply  was  that  he  knew  only  the 
pack-trail,  and  that  wagons  could  not  go  that  trail.  You  ask  when 
I  first  heard  the"  (Whitman  Saved  Oregon)  "story,  as  told  by  Gray 
in  his  History  of  Oregon.  Answer :  I  never  heard  it  spoken  of  till 
the  publication  of  that  history  by  Gray.  I  never  saw  any  pamphlet 
or  letter  ever  published  by  Dr.  Whitman  at  any  date." 

''The  part  I  took  in  1842-3  is  evidence  that  Dr.  Whitman  never 
made  a  public  speech  or  had  anything  published  at  that  time." 
.  .  .  "A  few  words  of  inference:  Were  Dr.  Whitman  alive  you 
would  never  have  heard  of  his  being  the  Savior  of  Oregon.  It  is 
all  a  fabrication ;  nor  did  Dr.  Whitman  ever  claim  to  have  any 
influence  in  getting  up  the  emigration  of  1813 — when  he  overtook 
us  the  magnitude  of  the  train  took  him  by  surprise." 

June  19,  1885,  Mr.  Shively  wrote  me  again,  denying  pointblank 
what  Hon.  John  Hobson  (who  was  a  boy  of  18  in  1843)  wrote  to 
Rev.  M.  Eells,  under  date  of  Jan.  30,  1883,  as  to  Whitman  inducing 
Mr.  Shively,  and  the  Hobson  family,  and  Miles  Eyars  (or  Ayers)  to 
join  the  1843  migration.  (Cf.  M.  Eells'  pamphlet,  "Did  Dr.  M. 
Whitman  Save  Oregon,"  p.  30.) 

He  says:  "I  don't  know  how  to  reconcile  Mr.  Hobson's  state- 
ments that  I  was  prevailed  upon  to  come  to  Oregon  by  Whitman, 
for  I  had  no  knowledge  of  Dr.  Whitman  till  he  overtook  the  migra- 
tion on  the  Platte,  in  1843."  .  .  .  "About  the  1st  of  November, 
1842,  in  St.  Louis,  Mo.,  I  first  of  all  had  bills  printed  and  posted  to 
make  up  a  party  to  migrate  to  Oregon.  About  this  time  arrived  from 
England  William  Hobson  and  family,  and  they  joined  the  migra- 
tion. So  did  Miles  Avers,  another  English  family,  and  hundreds  of 
others.  Mr.  John  Hobson  was  a  boy  at  that  time,  and  is  laboring 
under  a  great  mistake  when  he  says  Whitman  influenced  me  to  come 


132  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

to  Oregon.  Six  liimdred  and  forty  acres  of  land  is  what  induced 
me  to  come  to  Oregon,  and  I  got  it.  Dr.  Whitman  passed  St.  Louis 
after  I  had  left,  and  brought  me  documents  from  my  friends  there. 
I  do  not  remember  any  advice  on  the  part  of  Captain  Grant  to  leave 
the  wagons;  he  told  the  questioners  that  they  could  not  go  the 
pack-trail,  but  says  he,  ^'You  Americans  can  do  anything."  I  do 
not  think  that  what  Grant  or  Whitman  said  had  a  shade  of  influ- 
ence; the  party  had  started  for  the  Willamette  with  wagons,  and 
they  were  going  through  with  them  or  'bust'." 

In  April,  1887,  I  sent  Mr.  Shively  the  following  questions: 
''From  all  your  experience  of  pioneer  life,  do  you  think  that  the  ser- 
vices of  Dr.  Whitman  to  the  migration  of  1843  were  any  other  than 
or  any  greater  than  those  which  any  vigorous,  energetic  and  reason- 
ably public  spirited  pioneer  physician  would  have  rendered,  and 
ought  to  have  rendered,  to  any  party  of  emigrants  largely  composed 
of  women  and  children,  with  whom  he  was  traveling  toward  his 
present  and  their  future  home?"  To  which,  on  May  2,  1887,  he  re- 
plied :  "Dr.  Whitman  was  in  the  noonday  of  life,  and  was  of  great 
service  to  the  immigrants  the  fore  part  of  the  route,  but  he  soon 
grew  weary,  and  finally  he  grew  very  cross,  and  quarreled  with  Mr. 
Lovejoy,  his  traveling  companion,  on  arriving  at  his  station." 

When  the  migration  divided  into  two  bands,  on  June  9,  1843, 
William  J.  Martin  was  elected  captain  of  one  band  and  Jesse  Apple- 
gate  of  the  other.  At  Fort  Plall,  Mr.  Martin,  with  Captain  John 
Gantt,  Mr.  Joseph  Childs  and  14  other  men  took  the  road  to  Cali- 
fornia. (Cf.  Tr.  Oregon  Pioneer  Association,  1875;  Nesmith's  ad- 
dress, p.  53.)  Mr.  Jesse  Applegate  went  to  Oregon  and  spent  the 
rest  of  his  long  and  honorable  life  there  and  in  California,  much 
the  greater  part  in  Oregon. 

June  22,  1885,  he  wrote  me  from  Yoncalla,  Ore.,  as  follows: 
"Your"  (my)  "questions  are: 

"  'First.  Did  you  at  any  time  hear  Dr.  Whitman  claim  to  have 
any  interviews  with  Webster  and  Tyler  about  Oregon  matters?' 

"Ans.     I  have  no  recollection  of  any  such  interviews." 

"  'Second.  Did  you  at  any  time  hear  him  claim  that  the  pos- 
session of  Oregon  by  the  United  States  was  in  any  sense  dependent 
on  that  migration  of  1843  going  through  with  wagons?' 

"Ans.     I  did  not." 

"'Third.  Do  you  remember  whether  or  not  from  the  letters 
of  Robt.  Shortess  and  others  or  from  any  other  source  you  had 
learned  that  wagons  could  be  taken  through  the  Blue  Mountains 
before  you  left  Missouri?' 

"Ans.     No." 

"  'Fourth.  Had  you  heard  of  Dr.  Whitman  before  you  left 
Missouri?' 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  133 

"Ans.  Through  a  letter  from  Robt.  Shortess  I  heard  of  Dr. 
Whitman  as  a  missionary  in  the  Walla  Walla  country." 

(Robert  Shortess  was  one  of  the  Oregon  migration  under  Thos. 
J.  Farnham  in  1839,  and  was  hired  by  Dr.  Whitman  to  work  at 
Wailatpu  for  a  short  time  in  1839-40,  W.  I.  M.) 

"  'Fifth.  Would  your  party  have  gone  through  with  wagons 
all  the  way  in  any  event,  whether  Dr.  Whitman  had  been  with  you 
or  not?' 

''Ans.  Dr.  Whitman  had  nothing  to  do  with  our  outfit  or  mode 
of  travel.  From  the  time  he  joined  us  on  the  Platte  River  he  was 
a  valuable  addition  to  our  party,  but  not  indispensable  to  it." 

"  'Sixth.  Did  you  hear  Capt.  Grant  at  Fort  Hall  make  any 
representations  about  the  difficulty  of  taking  wagons  beyond  Fort 
Hall,  which  you,  from  your  subsequent  experience  and  observation 
in  going  over  the  route,  deemed  unfair  or  unwarranted  by  the  facts 
of  the  case?' 

"Ans.     There  were  none  such  made." 

"  'Seventh.  Was  Dr.  Whitman  in  any  sense  regarded  by  that 
migration  after  he  joined  it  as  its  leader?" 

"Ans.    He  was  not  so  regarded." 

"  'Eighth.  When  did  you  first  hear  this  story  about  Whitman 
having  saved  Oregon  to  the  United  States  substantially  as  told  by 
Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding  and  Mr.  W.  H.  Gray?' 

"Ans.  About  the  time  those  gentlemen  convinced  themselves 
that  such  was  the  case." 

"Having  answered  your  questions  categorically  I  will  simply 
state  that  Dr.  Whitman  was  an  energetic,  intelligent  and  useful 
man,  who  did  well  his  part,  but  his  part  was  not  a  high  one.  He 
was  not  one  to  become  a  leader  of  men  or  a  mover  in  any  great 
enterprise." 

Jesse  Applegate  had  two  brothers  in  that  migration,  Charles 
and  Lindsay.  That  all  three,  like  Burnett,  Shively  and  Nesmith, 
were  natural  leaders  of  men  is  evident  from  their  subsequent 
prominent  records  as  citizens  of  Oregon. 

In  September,  1888,  I  sent  to  Hon.  Lindsay  Applegate  at  Ash- 
land, Ore.,  a  letter  containing  questions,  to  which  he  replied  Octo- 
ber 7,  1888,  as  follows: 

"My  answers  to  your  questions  are  as  follows : 

"  'Question  1.  Was  Dr.  Whitman  considered  by  you  or  by  that 
migration  generally  as  in  any  sense  the  organizer  or  one  of  the 
organizers  or  the  leader  of  the  migration  of  1843?' 

"Ans.  No  one  ever  heard  of  such  a  man  until  we  were  hun- 
dreds of  miles  on  the  way." 

"  'Question  2.  Did  you  at  any  time  while  that  migration  was 
on  the  way  hear  him  say  or  hear  any  one  else  say  that  they  had 


134  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

heard  him  say  that  his  object  iu  going  to  the  States  had  been  to 
lead  an  emigration  to  Oregon  with  wagons?' 

"Ans.  No.  He  uniformly  explained  that  his  expedition  was 
in  the  interest  of  his  mission.  He  rushed  back  to  prevent  his  Mis- 
sion Board  from  discontinuing  his  mission  and  to  urge  upon  the 
attention  of  that  Board  the  necessity  of  not  only  continuing  his 
mission,  but  that  he  should  be  provided  with  more  means  that  he 
might  resist  the  encroachments  of  the  Catholics.  He  traveled  with 
us  until  the  most  dangerous  tribes  of  Indians  had  been  passed, 
which  brought  us  to  the  Burnt  River  Hills,  and  then  he  left  us 
and  went  on  to  his  mission  station  and  we  had  our  way  to  explore 
and  cut  through  the  Blue  Mountains  forest  after  that.  And  he 
took  off  with  him  a  lot  of  our  young  men  that  w^e  fed  across  the 
plains,  whose  desertion  greatly  weakened  our  force  in  cutting 
through  the  forests." 

''At  the  Pacific  Springs,  our  first  camp  west  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains  and  first  day's  travel  into  Oregon,  the  Oregon  question 
came  up.  It  was  in  this  form :  What  should  we  do  in  case  Oregon 
should  some  time  become  a  British  province?  Various  determina- 
tions were  expressed,  many  saying  they  would  return  to  the  States. 
But  Whitman  said  that  the  question  of  the  jurisdiction  of  any 
earthly  prince,  potentate  or  power  was  of  but  small  consideration. 
What  he  was  concerned  about  was  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ." 

''  'Question  3.  Did  you  at  any  time  while  that  migration  was 
on  the  way  hear  from  Dr.  W^hitman  any  declaration  that  the  Amer- 
ican title  to  Oregon  was  in  any  way  dependent  on  that  migration 
going  through  with  wagons?' 

"Ans.  No.  But  wiien  he  overtook  us  on  the  plains  he  did  say 
that  he  had  never  heard  that  any  migration  had  started  until  he 
got  to  St.  Louis." 

"  'Question  4.  Did  you  then  or  at  any  later  time  hear  Dr. 
Whitman  claim  that  he  had  had  any  interviews  with  Secretary 
Webster  and  President  Tyler  about  Oregon  matters,  and  if  not 
thou,  when  did  you  hear  this  claim  made  for  him,  substantially  as 
stated  by  Spalding  and  Gray?' 

"Ans.  No.  He  never  pretended  to  any  such  thing.  I  never 
heard  of  any  such  claim  being  set  up  until  long  after  the  Doctor 
was  dead." 

"  'Question  5.  In  your  judgment  would  that  migration  have 
gone  through  to  Walla  Walla  with  wagons  if  Dr.  Whitman  had 
not  been  with  it?' 

"Ans.  We  did  not  depend  upon  the  Doctor  at  all  for  any  course 
or  direction.  We  depended  and  relied  upon  the  instructions  which 
we  had  received  from  Robert  Shortess  of  Oregon." 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  135 

"  'Question  (>.  Did  you  hear  Capt.  Grant  at  Fort  Hall  make 
any  representations  about  the  difficulty  of  taking  wagons  beyond 
Fort  Hall,  which  you  from  your  subsequent  experience  and  obser- 
vation in  going  over  the  route  deemed  unfair  or  unwarranted  by 
the  facts  of  the  case?' 

"Ans.  He  was  glad  to  see  us  and  he  was  kind.  He  said  that 
considering  what  we  had  done  and  what  he  knew  of  the  country 
we  could  go  with  wagons  anywhere." 

"  'Question  7.  Did  Captain  Grant  make  any  effort  to  induce 
the  migration  of  1843  to  go  to  California  instead  of  Oregon  by  ex- 
aggerated statements  about  the  difficulties  of  the  route  to  Oregon, 
or  in  any  other  way  or  by  any  other  means  as  far  as  you  know?' 

"Ans.    He  did  not  undertake  to  advise  us  in  any  way." 

"  'Question  8.  Before  starting  from  Missouri  did  any  fear  of 
not  being  able  to  get  through  with  wagons  disturb  you  or  influence 
you  in  any  way?' 

"Ans.  We  understood  what  we  were  about.  We  had  instruc- 
tions from  Shortess — a  careful  account  of  the  country  all  the  way. 
We  were  able  to  make  roads,  boats  or  do  anything,  were  prepared 
with  all  manner  of  tools.  We  were  not  starting  out  in  a  helpless 
condition.  We  had  bands  of  cattle  and  horses  with  us.  We  could 
have  left  our  wagons  and  gone  on,  or  we  could  have  wintered  and 
taken  another  season  for  it.  No,  we  had  no  doubt  about  being  able 
to  go  through." 

"  'Question  9.  Were  the  services  of  Dr.  Whitman  to  the  migra- 
tion of  1843  any  other  than  or  any  greater  than  those  which  any 
vigorous,  energetic  and  reasonably  public-spirited  pioneer  physi- 
cian ought  to  have  rendered  to  a  migration  composed  largely  of 
women  and  children,  with  whom  he  was  traveling  towards  what 
was  his  and  was  destined  to  be  their  future  home?' 

"Ans.  As  far  as  Dr.  Whitman's  being  of  any  service  to  the  mi- 
gration of  1843  is  concerned,  I  consider  it  a  misfortune  that  we 
ever  saw  him,  from  the  fact  that  he  left  us  at  Boise,  taking  with 
him  a  portion  of  our  young  men,  and  leaving  us  to  cut  our  way 
through  the  Burnt  River  and  Blue  Mountain  forests  without  their 
aid." 

"  'Question  10.  In  your  judgment  would  anything  that  Capt. 
Grant  or  any  other  officers  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  might  have 
said  about  the  difficulties  of  going  further  with  wagons  have 
influenced  any  considerable  number  of  the  1843  migration  to  have 
left  their  wagons  at  Fort  Hall,  if  Whitman  had  not  been  with 
you?' 

"Ans.     No." 

"  'Question  11.  Did  you  notice  or  hear  of  anything  in  the  con- 
duct of  Capt.  Grant  while  the  migration  of  1843  was  at  Fort  Hall 


136  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

which  seemed  to  you  theu,  or  subsequently  as  you  thought  about  it 
and  about  the  actual  difficulties  of  the  route,  as  being  otherwise 
than  candid  ;ind  honorable,  and  reasonably  cautious  and  prudent 
in  view  of  all  the  facts  of  the  case?' 

"Ans.     No." 

From  Nesmith  I  never  heard,  as  the  mild  insanity  which 
clouded  the  last  few  months  of  his  long  and  honored  life  had  at- 
tacked him  just  before  my  letter  reached  him,  but  in  a  letter  to 
Kev.  M.  ]<]ells  (published  on  pp.  28-0  of  the  before  mentioned  pamph- 
let entitled  ^'Marcus  Whitman,  M.  D.,  Portland,  Ore.,  1883,"),  he 
wrote : 

''Dixie  Station,  Polk  County,  Oregon,  Jan.  22,  1883. 
"Rev.  M.  Eells, 

''My  Dear  Sir:  In  answer  to  your  first  question,  'Where  did 
you  first  see  Dr.  Whitman?'  I  am  not  able  to  reply  as  definitely  as 
I  could  wish  to  do,  but  will  give  you  the  best  of  my  recollections. 
Our  party  of  immigrants  assembled  at  a  point  near  Fitzlnigh's 
Mill,  a  few  miles  west  of  Independence,  Missouri,  on  the  20th  of 
May,  1843,  for  the  purpose  of  organizing.  I  will  not  be  certain 
whether  it  was  at  this  meeting  or  a  day  or  two  after,  on  the  line 
of  march,  that  I  first  met  the  Doctor.  I  had  never  seen  or  heard 
of  him  before,  consequently  nothing  that  he  said  or  wrote  had  any 
influence  in  inducing  me  to  go  to  Oregon.  In  fact,  I  had  started 
from  Iowa  in  1842  to  come  to  Oregon  with  Dr.  White's  party  of 
that  year,  but  I  arrived  at  Independence  seventeen  days  after  Dr. 
White's  party  had  left,  and  as  the  Pawnee  Indians  were  hostile, 
I  did  not  dare  venturing  alone  to  overtake  the  party,  and  remained 
at  Fort  Scott,  110  miles  south  of  Independence,  in  the  then  Kansas 
territory,  until  the  party  of  1843  rendezvoused  as  above  stated. 

"I  know  of  no  person  who  was  induced  to  come  to  Oregon  in 
consequence  of  Dr.  Whitman's  representations,  and  I  think  that 
the  rest  of  the  immigration  were  as  ignorant  of  Dr.  Whitman,  his 
speaking  and  writing,  as  I  was. 

"I  am,  respectfully,  your  obedient  servant, 

"(Signed)     J.   W.   NESMITH." 

And  certainly  nothing  further  is  needed  to  show  that  in  1883 
(when  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  had  been  pretty  thor- 
oughly discussed  on  the  Pacific  Coast)  he  took  no  stock  in  any 
"Whitman  Saved  Oregon"  tale. 

As  conclusive  proof  of  just  how  that  wicked  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.,  through  their  agent  Grant,  sought  "to  deceive  and  rob  the 
naked  and  starving  immigrant,"  I  submit  the  following  statement 
of  the  prices  charged  the  1843  migration  by  the  American  Fur  Co., 
at  Fort  Laramie,  only  589  miles  from  the  Missouri  frontier,  and 


ACQUISITION    OF   OREGON  137 

with  a  good  w  agon  road  over  a  level  country  all  the  way  to  it,  and 
at  Fort  Hall,  1,323  miles  from  the  Missouri  frontier,  and  700  miles 
east  of  its  base  of  supplies  at  Vancouver  (of  which  475  miles  was 
pack  trail  transportation),  and  at  Fort  Boise.  At  Fort  Laramie, 
according  to  "Old  Pioneer"  (p.  112),  "coffee  was  |1.50  a  pint; 
brown  sugar,  the  same;  flour,  unbolted,  25  cents  a  pound;  powder, 
|1.50  a  pound ;  lead,  75  cents  a  pound ;  percussion  caps,  |1.50  a 
box;  calico,  very  inferior,  |1  a  yard."  Contrast  this  with  the  fol- 
lowing in  a  letter  to  me  from  Gov.  P.  H.  Burnett,  dated  San  Fran- 
cisco, Dec.  4,  1888: 

"I  find  the  following  entries  in  my  journal :  At  Fort  Hall, 
prices  of  provisions,  etc. — Flour,  25  cents  a  pint;  coffee,  50  cents; 
sugar,  50  cents;  rice,  33  1-3  cents;  powder,  56  cents  per  pound.  At 
Fort  Boise,  nothing  in  the  provision  line  to  sell  but  butter,  25 
cents,  and  coffee,  50  cents  a  pint.  Everything  mentioned  was  sold 
by  the  pint  except  powder.  I  suppose  this  usage  was  based  upon 
the  fact  that  Indians  understood  measure  better  than  weight. 

"Yours  truly, 

"PETER  H.  BURNETT." 

Yet  Mrs.  Eva  Emery  Dye,  in  "McLoughlin  and  Old  Oregon," 
published  as  late  as  1900,  writes  (p.  255)  of  the  experiences  of  this 
migration  at  Fort  Hall  as  follows : 

"Flour  at  Fort  Hall  was  selling  at  mountain  prices — a  dollar  a 
pint," — which  is  as  close  to  the  truth  as  any  of  her  statements  in 
support  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story. 

If  it  is  asked  why  Grant  did  not  know  as  much  about  passes 
over  the  Blue  Mountains  as  Payette  did,  the  answer  is  that  Payette 
had  been  then  at  Fort  Boise  (only  100  miles  east  of  the  Blue 
Mountains)  for  nearly  nine  years,  while  Grant  had  been  less  than 
two  years  at  Fort  Hall,  375  miles  east  of  the  Blue  Mountains.  It 
is  very  curious  if  Whitman  had  any  special  interest  in  the  opening 
up  of  a  wagon  road  from  the  States  to  Oregon,  that  he  had  lived 
for  six  years — 1836-1842 — only  twenty-nine  miles  from  the  western 
base  of  the  Blue  Mountains,  and  less  than  fifty-five  miles  from  the 
summit  of  that  range,  and  only  seventy-two  miles  by  the  route  the 
1843  party  traveled  from  the  Grande  Ronde,  and  in  all  that  time 
had  learned  nothing  of  this  "easier  pass"  that  Farnham  learned 
about  from  Payette  at  Fort  Boise  in  September,  1839. 

From  Walla  Walla  part  of  the  migration  of  1843  drove  their 
wagons  down  the  south  side  of  the  Columbia  (keeping  back  a  few 
miles  from  the  river  so  as  to  have  good  grass)  to  the  Dalles,  and 
so  completed  the  development  of  the  wagon  road  to  the  eastern 
base  of  the  Cascade  Mountains. 


138  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

Various  advocates  ol"  the  Whitman  Legend,  including  .Mowry  (p. 
209),  Craighead  (p.  76),  Rev.  M.  Eells,  "Ind.  Missions"  (p.  79), 
have  asserted  that  Whitinnn  furnished  the  migration  with  a  guide 
for  tliis  part  of  tlieir  journey,  but  all  the  evidence  is  to  the  con- 
trary. 

The  Wilkes  Narrative  says  (pp.  89-90)  :  ''While  pausing  at  this 
place  (Whitman's  ]Mission),  we  were  agitated  and  perplexed  in  the 
extreme  what  course  to  take  in  relation  to  the  arrangements  w^e 
should  make  for  the  successful  conclusion  of  our  expedition.  We 
were  assailed  with  various  opinions  from  every  one  we  met,  and 
in  the  general  indecision  were  for  a  time  brought  to  a  dead  stand. 
Most  of  the  residents  of  the  mission  agreed  in  advising  us  to  leave 
our  cattle  and  wagons  at  this  point,  or  if  we  did  take  them  to  the 
Dalles  or  narrows  (a  point  on  the  Columbia,  120  miles  in  advance) 
to  send  them  back  here  to  winter.  Others  told  us  that  we  could 
not  reach  the  Dalles  with  our  teams,  as  jaded  as  they  were,  as  w'e 
would  find  no  range  along  the  course  of  the  Columbia.  All,  how- 
ever, seemed  to  think  that  it  would  be  impossible  for  us  to  get  our 
wagons  or  our  cattle  to  the  Willamette  this  fall.  But  we  had 
already  overcome  too  many  difficulties  to  admit  the  word  impos- 
sible as  a  part  of  our  vocabulary.  We  could  not  remain  where  we 
were  for  a  number  of  reasons.  The  pasturage  in  the  immediate 
vicinity  was  too  scanty;  the  width  of  range  would  not  allow  us  to 
keep  our  stock  together,  and  we  suffered  an  additional  danger  of 
tlieir  loss  from  the  dishonest  practices  of  the  Indians,  who,  if  they 
did  not  steal  them  outright,  led  them  off  for  the  purpose  of  being 
l)aid  to  bring  them  in.  Many  of  us  were  obliged  to  pay  a  shirt  (the 
pi-ice  uniformly  charged  by  the  Indians  for  every  service)  for  three 
or  four  successive  mornings,  to  get  back  the  same  animal,  and  this 
was  a  kind  of  tribute  that  if  kept  up  would  make  fearful  inroads 
uj)on  our  wardrobe.  The  majority  of  the  emigrants  therefore  re- 
solved to  attempt  the  threatened  dangers"  (rather  than  continue 
subject)  "to  the  actual  evils  that  now  beset  us.  Accordingly  they 
set  out  in  squads,  on  successive  days,  and  before  the  end  of  the 
month  all  had  reached  the  Dalles  in  safety.  What  surprised  them 
most,  after  the  representations  which  had  been  made,  was  the  fine 
pasturage  they  met  with  all  along  the  way,  and  especially  at  the 
Dalles,  where,  we  had  been  led  to  believe,  the  cattle  could  not  sub- 
sist at  all  during  the  winter.  As  the  parties  to  which  I  now 
allude  preceded  me,  I  may  as  well  continue  this  anticipatory  ac- 
count of  the  route  as  far  as  it  concerns  their  progress.  They 
struck  off  in  a  southwesterly  direction,  leaving  the  sterility  of  the 
river's  bank,  and  instead  of  perishing  for  want  of  range,  their  cat- 
tle even  improved  all  along  the  way.  Some  of  theni  left  their 
wagons  at  the  Dalles  and  drove  their  en  (tie  through  the  Cascade 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  139 

Mountains,  conveying  their  baggage  and  families  on  pack  horses 
through  the  mountain  paths ;  and  some  went  down  the  river  by  the 
boats.  But  the  greatest  portion  of  them  constructed  rafts  of  dead 
pine  timber,  a  few  miles  below  the  Dalles,  large  enough  to  carry 
six  or  eight  wagons,  and  upon  these  floated  safely  down  to  the  Cas- 
cades on  the  Columbia.  Their  cattle  were  driven  down  the  river's 
bank  about  thirty  miles,  then  swam  across  and  were  driven  down 
the  other  bank  to  Vancouver.  Here  the  party  obtained  boats  from 
Dr.  McLaughlin,  the  Governor  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  estab- 
lishments in  Oregon,  and  returned  to  the  Cascades  for  such  of 
the  families,  wagons  and  baggage  as  had  been  left  behind.  This 
method  was  found  to  be  of  all  the  most  successful.  By  the  first  of 
December,  all  the  emigrants  had  arrived  at  Vancouver,  but  the 
greatest  portion  of  them  had  reached  there  as  early  as  the  15th  of 
the  preceding  month." 

H.  H.  Bancroft's  '^Oregon,"  Vol.  I.  (p.  405),  says:  "Neither 
Whitman  nor  McKinlay  at  Fort  Walla  Walla  knew  anything  of 
the  country  back  from  the  Columbia  River  (This  is  McKinlay 's  own 
statement,  given  in  a  letter  to  Elwood  Evans,  which  Evans  has 
kindly  sent  me),  or  whether  there  could  be  found  crossings  for 
the  wagons  at  the  John  Day  and  Des  Chutes  Rivers,  and  both  ad- 
vised the  immigrants  to  leave  their  wagons  and  cattle  in  the  Walla 
Walla  Valley  to  be  brought  down  in  the  spring,  and  to  make  them- 
selves boats  in  which  to  descend  the  Columbia.  One  of  the  argu- 
ments used  in  favor  of  this  plan  was  that  no  grass  would  be  likely 
to  be  found  on  the  route,  as  the  natives  were  accustomed  at  this 
season  of  the  year  to  burn  it  off — a  statement  which  sufficiently 
proved  the  Doctor's  ignorance  of  the  country,  and  which  was  con- 
strued to  his  disadvantage  by  those  who  traveled  through  it.  (Says 
Waldo,  who  did  not  take  the  advice  offered:  'Whitman  lied  like 
hell.  He  wanted  my  cattle,  and  told  me  the  grass  was  burnt  off 
between  his  place  and  the  Dalles.  The  first  night  out  I  found  the 
finest  grass  I  ever  saw,  and  it  was  good  every  night.'  Critiques, 
Ms.,  16.)" 

Idem  (p.  406)  :  "At  the  mission  they  received  one  fat  bullock 
of  Spanish  stock  for  two  poor  emigrant  oxen.  Those  who  did  not 
distinguish  the  difference  between  Spanish  and  American  cattle 
consented  willingly  to  pay  this  price  for  fat  beef.  Without  any 
expense  to  the  missionaries  they  had  in  the  spring  two  fat  Ameri- 
can work-oxen  for  their  one  bullock." 

This  road,  about  1,845  miles  long,  thus  developed  without  a 
dollar  of  expenditure  by  either  the  national  or  any  local  govern- 
ment, or  by  any  private  corporation  in  either  surveying  or  con- 
structing it,  continued  to  be  used  for  many  years  with  only  such 
improvements  in  clearing  out  rocks,  trees  and  stumps,  and  making 


140  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

detours  to  avoid  the  worst  hills,  as  successive  yearly  migrations 
made  of  their  own  volition.  Over  the  Cascade  Mountains  a  road  was 
made  to  the  Willamette  Valley  in  the  Spring  and  Summer  of  1846 
by  Mr.  S.  K.  Barlow,  one  of  the  1845  migration,  under  a  grant  for 
a  toll  road  made  him  by  the  provisional  government  of  Oregon,  at 
a  total  cost  of  |2,500f  and  after  two  years,  when  the  amount  it  had 
cost  for  original  construction  and  needful  repairs  had  been  repaid 
to  Barlow  in  the  tolls  collected,  he  donated  the  road  to  the  Terri- 
tory of  Oregon.  (Cf.  El  wood  Evans'  "History  of  the  Pacific  North- 
west," Vol.  II.,  p.  203.) 

With  the  building  of  this  road  over  the  Cascades  neither  Whit- 
man nor  any  other  missionary  had  anything  whatever  to  do. 


CHAPTER    VI. 

GOVERNMENTAL    ACTION    RELATING    TO    OREGON. 

(a)  Diplomacy  of  the  Oregon  Question. 

(b)  Congressional  Debates  and  Committee  Reports  on  Oregon. 

(c)  Executive  Action  About  Oregon. 

An  absolutely  indispensable  postulate  for  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  Story  is  that  the  National  Government  at  Washington  was 
ignorant  as  to  the  value  of  and  indifferent  concerning  the  acquisi- 
tion of  Oregon,  and  that  in  this  they  merely  reflected  the  condition 
of  mind  of  the  people  of  the  country;  and  as  the  Whitman  Legend 
has  been  so  widely  circulated  in  the  past  twenty-five  years  that  not 
merely  popular  writers  caring  nothing  for  truth  if  fictions  would 
better  sell  their  books,  like  CoflQn  in  ''Building  of  the  Nation,"  Eva 
Emery  Dye  in  ''McLoughlin  and  Old  Oregon,"  but  some  really  emi- 
nent historians — without  investigating  original  documents  them- 
selves— have  imposed  these  fictions  on  their  readers,  it  seems  neces- 
sary to  present  the  facts  on  this  phase  of  the  Oregon  question  in 
some  detail. 

Up  to  1821  it  is  almost  purely  a  question  of  diplomacy,  from 
1821  to  1831  diplomatic  and  congressional  action  were  both  much 
in  evidence,  from  1831  to  October,  1843,  it  was  congressional  and 
executive  action  without  diplomacy,  and  after  October,  1843,  di- 
plomacy and  congressional  action  were  again  both  active;  but  di- 
plomacy was  the  chief  factor  in  the  final  settlement  of  the  bound- 
ary at  49  degrees. 

The  first  diplomatic  action  in  any  way  affecting  the  acquisition 
of  Oregon  was  the  Louisiana  purchase,  in  1803 ;  not  that  Louisiana 
ever  covered  any  part  of  the  old  Oregon  Territory,  or  anything  else 
west  of  the  summit  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  but  that  the  acquisi- 
tion of  the  Louisiana  Territory  carried  our  possessions  to  the  east- 
ern verge  of  Oregon,  and  so  gave  us  as  strong  a  claim  by  con- 
tiguity to  that  part  of  Oregon  south  of  49  degrees  as  England  had 
by  contiguity  to  that  part  north  of  49  degrees. 

It  is  utterly  inconceivable  that  we  should  have  ever  cared  to 
possess  Oregon  if  we  had  not  first  acquired  the  Louisiana  Terri- 
tory. 

As  we  have  seen,  while  negotiations  for  the  purchase  of  Louisi- 
ana were  in  progress  and  before  it  was  certain  that  any  part  of 
Louisiana  could  be  bought,  Jefferson  sent  his  famous  message  of 


142  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

Jauuary  18,  1803,  to  Congress,  recoinineudinji^  that  an  expedition 
be  fitted  out  and  sent  up  the  ^Missouri  and  across  the  ''Stony 
Mountains,"  and  down  the  Columbia  to  the  Pacific,  and  this  recom- 
mendation was  adopted,  and  |2,5()0  appropriated,  and  the  expe- 
dition actually  under  way  before  the  news  of  the  cession  of  Louis- 
iana was  received,  thouj;h  when  that  news  arrived  the  expedition 
was  halted  east  of  the  Mississippi  till  the  spring  of  1804,  that  the 
fornuil  transfer  of  the  territory  might  be  made  before  the  expedi- 
tion entered  it. 

The  story  of  this  expedition,  which  forged  so  strong  a  link  in 
our  chain  of  title  to  the  Oregon  Territory,  has  already  been  briefly 
stated  in  Chapter  III. 

When  tlie  Astoria  exj)edition  was  organizing  the  project  was 
submitted  to  the  National  Government,  and  according  to  Gallatin, 
"met  with  its  full  approbation  and  best  wishes  for  its  success." 
(Cf.  letter  of  Albert  Gallatin  to  John  J.  Astor,  dated  August  5, 
183.^,  in  appendix  to  Irving's  "Astoria.")  Astor  himself  goes  much 
further  in  his  letter  to  Benton,  dated  New  York,  January  29,  1829, 
saying:  "I  was  promised  by  the  Administration  the  protection  of 
the  Government,  and  in  fact  more,  but  I  regret  to  say,  hitherto 
nothing  has  been  done."  (Cf.  Benton's  Report  on  the  Fur  Trade, 
being  No.  G7  of  Sen.  Ex,  Doc,  20  Cong.,  2d  Sess.) 

So  far  as  yet  appears,  however,  there  are  no  contemporaneous 
documents  showing  any  action  by  our  Government  in  connection 
with  this  expedition. 

Though  the  total  results  of  the  war  of  1812  (prior  to  the  battle 
of  New  Orleans,  which  was  fought  after  the  treaty  of  peace  had 
been  signed,)  were  so  unsatisfactory  to  us  that  our  Government 
was  willing  to  end  it  with  the  Treaty  of  Ghent,  which  did  not  even 
mention  the  impressment  of  our  sailors,  the  right  of  search,  the 
inciting  of  Indians  to  attack  our  frontiers,  nor  the  Orders  in  Council, 
which  the  President  had  announced  as  the  causes  of  the  war,  yet  so 
far-sighted  were  the  statesmen  of  that  time  and  so  determined  to 
secure  for  us  at  least  the  greater  part  of  the  valley  of  Columbia's 
River,  that  on  March  22,  1814,  James  Monroe,  Secretary  of  State 
under  President  Madison — not  knowing  whether  or  not  Astoria 
had  been  cai)tured — gave  the  following  instructions  to  our  pleni- 
potentiaries to  negotiate  the  treaty  (who  were  John  Quincy  Adams, 
J.  A.  Bayard,  Henry  Clay,  Jonathan  Russell  and  Albert  Gallatin)  : 
''Should  a  treaty  be  concluded  with  Great  Britain  and  a  recii)rocaI 
restitution  of  territory  be  agreed  on,  you  will  have  it  in  mind  that 
the  United  States  had  in  their  possession  at  the  commencement  of 
the  war  a  post  at  the  mouth  of  the  river  Columbia,  which  com- 
manded the  river,  which  ought  to  be  com])rised  in  the  stipula- 
tions should  the  jjossession  have  been  wrested  from  us  during  the 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  143 

war.  On  no  pretext  can  the  British  Government  set  up  a  claim  to 
territory  south  of  tlie  northern  boundary  of  the  United  States.  It 
is  not  believed  that  they  have  any  claim  whatever  to  territory  on 
the  Pacific  Ocean.  You  will,  however,  be  careful  should  a  definition 
of  boundary  be  attempted,  not  to  countenance  in  any  manner,  or  in 
any  quarter,  a  pretension  in  the  British  Government  to  territory 
south  of  that  line.''  (Berlin  Arbitration,  p.  56.)  (For  the  whole 
subject  of  Treaty  of  Ghent,  Cf.  American  State  Papers,  Foreign 
Relations,  Vol.  III.,  Docs.  209  and  271,  and  Idem,  Vol.  IV.,  Doc. 
325.) 

The  capture  of  Astoria  by  the  British  was  not  known  to  our 
plenipotentiaries  at  Ghent  when  the  treaty  was  signed  December 
24,  1814  (Cf.  Greenhow,  1845  Ed.,  p.  30G). 

Forty-nine  degrees  was  proposed  as  the  boundary  from  the 
Lake  of  the  Woods  to  the  summit  of  the  Stony  Mountains,  but  the 
British  would  not  grant  it  unless  we  would  consent  to  relinquish 
what  we  deemed  ''our  rights  in  the  fisheries  within  the  jurisdiction 
of  Great  Britain,"  and  so  our  plenipotentiaries  refused  to  make  any 
concessions  on  that  subject.  The  treaty  said  nothing  about  bound- 
aries, but  provided  that  "all  territory,  places  and  possessions  what- 
soever, taken  by  either  party  from  the  other  during  the  war,  or 
which  may  be  taken  after  the  signing  of  this  treaty,  excepting  the 
islands  hereinafter  mentioned  (in  the  Bay  of  Fundy)  shall  be  re- 
stored without  delay." 

February  7,  1838,  Henry  Clay,  then  Senator  from  Kentucky, 
said  in  a  debate  on  Oregon  in  the  Senate,  that  he  himself  had  in- 
troduced the  word  possessions  in  this  stipulation  for  mutual  sur- 
render, for  the  express  purpose  of  securing  the  restoration  of  As- 
toria. (Cf.  Cong.  Globe,  25th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  169.)  Thus  be- 
gan that  diplomatic  struggle  with  Great  Britain  for  49  degrees  as 
our  northern  boundary  to  the  Pacific,  which  continued  thirty-two 
years  to  the  Treaty  of  Washington  in  1846. 

The  unswerving  tenacity  with  which  through  all  those  years 
every  administration  insisted  on  that  line,  constitutes  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  chapters  in,  and  one  of  the  most  brilliant 
triumphs  of  our  diplomacy,  and  although  the  advocates  of  the 
Whitman  Legend  claim  that  Webster  and  Tyler  were  ready  to  re- 
cede from  it,  and  were  only  prevented  by  the  opportune  arrival  of 
Whitman,  we  shall  see  that  there  is  the  most  positive  contempo- 
raneous evidence  of  the  entire  falsity  of  this  claim,  and  that  Web- 
ster— to  use  his  own  precise  language,  in  January  and  February, 
1843,  when  Whitman  (of  whose  existence  even  there  is  no  evidence 
that  Webster  and  Tyler  were  then  aware)  was  still  far  west  of  the 
Missouri  frontier — had  ''never  meditated  any  line  south  of  49  de- 
grees as  a  negotiable  boundary  line  for  the  United  States." 


144  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

July  18,  1815,  Mr.  Monroe,  Secretary  of  State,  informed  Mr. 
Baker,  the  charge  d'affaires  of  Great  Jiritain  at  Washington,  that 
**the  President  intended  immediately  to  reoccupy  the  post  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Columbia.  .  .  ."  But  no  measures  were  adopted 
for  the  i)urj)Ose  until  September,  1817,  when  Capt.  J.  Biddle,  com- 
manding the  sloop  of  war  Ontario,  and  Mr.  J.  B.  Prevost  were 
jointly  commissioned  to  proceed  in  that  ship  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Columbia  and  there  "to  assert  the  claim  of  the  United  States  to 
the  sovereignty  of  the  adjacent  country,  in  a  friendly  and  peace- 
able manner,  and  without  the  employment  of  force."  (Greenhow, 
Ed.  1845,  p.  307.) 

The  British  Plenipotentiary  at  Washington,  being  informed  of 
the  mission  of  Biddle  and  Prevost,  protested  versus  the  contem- 
plated action,  on  the  ground  that  Astoria  had  not  been  captured, 
but  bought  by  the  North  West  Co.,  and  further  that  "the  ter- 
ritory itself  was  early  taken  possession  of  in  His  Majesty's  name 
and  had  since  been  considered  as  forming  part  of  His  Majesty's  do- 
minions," though  without  specifying  when  or  by  whom  this  pos- 
session had  been  taken,  nor  on  what  grounds  it  was  claimed  as 
British  territory.  The  matter  was  referred  to  London  and  dis- 
cussed between  the  British  Foreign  OflSce  and  Richard  Rush,  our 
Minister  there,  and  on  his  clear  and  vigorous  presentation  of  our 
rights  in  the  premises  the  British  Government  admitted  that  we 
might  rightfully  claim  its  restoration,  and  instructions  were  issued 
under  which  Mr.  Prevost,  then  at  Valparaiso,  Chile,  was  offered 
passage  in  the  British  frigate  Blossom  to  the  Columbia,  and  on 
October  G.  1818,  the  British  flag  was  hauled  down  and  the  United 
States  flag  hoisted  over  Astoria,  and  the  following  act  of  delivery 
was  presented  by  the  British  Commissioners :  "In  obedience  to  the 
commands  of  His  Royal  Highness  the  Prince  Regent,  signified  in  a 
dispatch  from  the  Right  Honorable  the  Earl  Bathurst,  addressed  to 
the  partners  or  agents  of  the  North  West  Co.,  bearing  date  the  27th 
of  January,  1818,  and  in  obedience  to  a  subsequent  order  dated  the 
2Gth  of  July,  from  W.  H.  Sheriff,  Esq.,  captain  of  His  Majesty's 
ship  Andromache,  we,  the  undersigned,  do,  in  conformity  to  the 
first  article  of  the  Treaty  of  Ghent,  restore  to  the  Government  of 
the  United  States,  through  its  agent,  J.  B.  Prevost,  Esq.,  the  set- 
tlement of  Fort  George  on  the  Columbia  River.  Given  under  our 
hands,  in  triplicate,  at  Fort  George,  Columbia  River,  this  6th  day 
of  October,  1818. 

"(Signed)         F.  HICKEY, 
"Captain  of  His  Majesty's  Ship  Blossom. 

"J.   KEITH, 
"Of  the  N.  W.  Co." 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  145 

This  restoration  formed,  as  we  have  already  seen  and  shall  see 
in  further  examination  of  the  long  struggle  for  the  Oregon  Terri- 
tory, a  strong  link  in  our  chain  of  title,  and  the  British  Govern- 
ment, promptly  realizing  into  what  a  difficult  position  it  had  been 
placed  by  Capt.  Black's  folly  in  "capturing"  Astoria,  instead  of 
sailing  quietly  away  when  he  found  it  in  the  undisputed  possession 
of  the  great  Canadian  fur  company,  endeavored  to  minimize  the 
effect  of  this  restoration  by  claiming  that  certain  dispatches  which 
the  British  Foreign  Office  sent  to  its  own  agents,  but  which  those 
agents  did  not  communicate  to  our  Government,  either  through  Mr. 
Prevost  or  any  other  of  its  officers,  and  which  were  never  published 
till  the  negotiations  of  182G,  and  in  which  they  claimed  that  though 
willing  to  surrender  up  the  possession  to  the  United  States,  "they 
are  not  prepared  to  admit  the  validity  of  the  title  of  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  United  States  to  this  settlement"  rendered  nugatory  the 
claim  of  the  United  States  that  this  entirely  unlimited  restoration 
*'in  conformity  to  the  first  article  of  the  Treaty  of  Ghent"  was  a  rec- 
ognition of  our  right  to  the  sovereignty  of  the  country.  As  though 
the  private  opinion  of  one  litigant  in  a  court  expressed  to  his  own 
counsel,  but  not  stated  even  to  the  opposing  counsel,  much  less  to 
judge  or  jury,  till  eight  years  afterwards,  could  affect  the  title  to 
property  delivered  without  protest  or  reserve  to  the  other  party  in 
pursuance  of  the  judgment  of  the  court !  Mr.  Prevost  made  not  only 
an  exact  report  of  the  restoration  ceremonies,  but  also  a  brief  but 
very  favorable  report  on  the  value  of  the  country,  saying:  "It 
appeared  to  me  that  by  exhibiting  the  importance  of  the  position 
only,  I  should  not  have  fulfilled  the  object  of  the  President,  but 
that  it  was  equally  incumbent  upon  me  to  present  a  view  of  the 
country,  of  its  inhabitants,  of  its  resources,  of  its  approach,  and 
of  its  means  of  defense." 

James  Keith  wrote  Prevost  October  6,  1818,  asking  the  inten- 
tions of  the  United  States  Government  towards  the  North  West 
Co.,  to  which  Prevost  replied  under  date  of  October  6,  1818 : 

"In  answer  to  your  note  of  this  morning  I  have  the  honor  to 
state  that  the  principal  object  of  the  President  in  sending  me  thus 
far  was  to  obtain  such  information  of  the  place,  of  its  access  and 
of  its  commercial  importance,  as  might  enable  him  to  submit  to  the 
consideration  of  Congress  measures  for  the  protection  and  exten- 
sion of  the  establishment." 

(All  who  care  to  read  the  whole  report,  Avhich  is  valuable,  and 
was  often  quoted  in  later  congressional  reports  and  in  debates  in 
Congress,  will  find  it,  with  accompanying  papers,  in  Doc.  No.  112, 
Vol.  8,  Ex.  Papers,  17th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.) 

(The  document  covers  thirty-eight  pages  and  it  begins  with  a 
message  of  President  James  Monroe  dated  April  15,  1822,  which 


14G  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

was  read  iu  the  House  of  Represeutatives  April  17,  1822,  so  that 
the  message  is  sometimes  referred  to  as  the  message  of  April  15th 
and  sometimes  as  of  April  17,  1822.) 

May  22,  1818.  Albert  Gallatin  and  Kiehard  Kush  had  been  ap- 
pointed as  Envoys  Extraordinary  and  Ministers  Plenipotentiary 
to  negotiate  a  treaty  with  Great  Britain  on  five  subjects,  about 
which  ]»roposals  had  at  intervals  been  passing  between  the  two 
governments  nearly  all  the  time  since  the  Treaty  of  Ghent  was 
proclaimed  and  October  20^  1818,  only  two  weeks  after  the  restora- 
tion of  Astoria,  they  signed  the  convention  which  is  generally 
called  the  first  Treaty  of  Joint  Occupancy  of  Oregon,  though  at 
that  time  and  for  nearly  a  "dozen  years  afterwards  the  region  in 
question  was  not  generally  spoken  of  as  Oregon,  but  as  the  '^Co- 
lumbia River  Country,"  or  "the  northwest  coast  of  America,''  and 
is  so  indexed  in  "Annals  of  Congress"  and  ^'Debates  in  Congress" 
down  to  1828-1).  Article  1  of  the  treaty  gave  us  the  right  to  take, 
cure  and  dry  fish  on  certain  parts  of  the  coast  of  British  America. 

Article  2  fixed  the  boundary  between  the  United  States  and 
British  America  as  the  49th  parallel  of  north  latitude  from  the 
Lake  of  the  Woods  westward  to  the  Stony  Mountains  (the  name 
Rocky  Mountains  not  being  commonly  used  till  many  years  later). 

Article  4  extended  for  10  years  ''all  the  provisions  of  the  Con- 
vention of  1815  to  regulate  commerce  between  the  United  States 
and  the  British  dominions." 

Article  5  provided  for  submitting  to  arbitration  the  claims  of 
the  United  States  for  slaves  captured  by  the  British  in  the  War 
of  1812-14. 

Each  of  these  provisions  doubtless  seemed  to  everybody  except 
a  few  far-seeing  statesmen  of  more  consequence  than  Article  3, 
which  was  as  follows: 

"Article  3.  It  is  agreed  that  any  country  that  may  be  claimed 
by  either  party  on  the  northwest  coast  of  America  westward  of 
the  Stony  Mountains  shall,  together  with  its  harbours,  bays  and 
creeks,  and  the  navigation  of  all  rivers  within  the  same,  be  free 
and  open,  for  the  term  of  10  years  from  the  date  of  the  signature 
of  this  convention  to  the  vessels,  citizens  and  subjects  of  the  two 
powers. 

"It  being  well  understood  that  this  agreement  is  not  to  be 
construed  to  the  prejudice  of  any  claim  which  either  of  the  two 
high  contracting  powers  may  have  to  any  part  of  the  said  coun- 
try; nor  shall  it  be  taken  to  affect  the  claims  of  any  other  power 
or  state  to  any  part  of  said  country,  the  only  object  of  the  high 
contracting  parties  in  that  respect  being  to  prevent  disputes  and 
differences  among  themselves."     (American  State  Papers,  Foreign 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  147 

Kelations,  Vol.  IV.,  pp.  406-407;  or  Doc.  30G,  15th  Congress,  2d 

Session.) 

Why  our  plenii)otentiaries  did  not  insist  then  on  the  extension 
of  the  49th  parallel  as  our  northern  boundary  to  the  Pacific  is 
clearly  stated  by  Hon.  George  Bancroft  in  the  "Memorial  of  the 
United  States"  which  he  presented  to  the  Emperor  William  of 
Germany  as  the  arbitrator  of  the  San  Juan  Island  question,  on 
December  12,  1871,  as  follows :  ''On  the  29th  of  October,  1818,  the 
parallel  of  49  degrees  was  adopted  as  the  boundary  line  between 
the  two  countries  as  far  as  the  Stony,  or,  as  we  now  more  com- 
monly call  them,  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

"From  that  range  of  mountains  to  the  Pacific,  America,  partly 
from  respect  to  the  claims  of  Spain,  was  willing  to  delay  for  ten 
years  the  continuance  of  the  boundary  line."  (Berlin  Arbitration, 
p.  G.)  The  negotiations  relating  to  this  treaty  are  often  spoken 
of  as  of  1817-18,  but  as  we  have  seen,  our  plenipotentiaries  were 
not  appointed  till  May  22,  1818,  and  the  first  protocol  of  the  nego- 
tiations was  not  presented  till  August  27,  1818. 

No  little  confusion  exists  in  the  public  mind  as  to  the  grounds 
advanced  by  our  plenipotentiaries,  several  of  the  advocates  of  the 
Whitman  Saved  Oregon  fiction  (notably  Burgess  in  Chapter  XIV. 
of  "The  Middle  Period")  claiming  that  the  main  contention  was 
that  the  Louisiana  purchase  extended  to  the  Pacific. 

None  of  the  statesmen  who  negotiated  about  the  subject  ever 
attached  much  importance  to  the  claim  that  Louisiana  extended  to 
the  Pacific. 

On  the  day  this  treaty  was  signed  Messrs.  Gallatin  and  Rush 
wrote  a  letter  from  London  to  John  Q.  Adams,  Secretary  of  State, 
stating  the  history  of  the  negotiations,  and  the  part  relating  to 
Article  3,  is  as  follows: 

"3.     Columbia  River. 

"This  subject  was  during  the  whole  negotiation  connected  by 
the  British  Plenipotentiaries  with  that  of  the  boundary  line.  They 
appeared  altogether  unwilling  to  agree  to  this  in  any  shape,  unless 
some  arrangement  was  made  with  respect  to  the  country  westward 
of  the  Stony  Mountains. 

"This  induced  us  to  propose  an  extension  of  the  boundary  line 
due  west  to  the  Pacific  Ocean.  AVe  did  not  assert  thsk  the  United 
States  had  a  perfect  right  to  that  country,  but  insisted  that  their 
claim  was  at  least  good  against  Great  Britain.  The  49th  degree 
of  north  latitude  had,  in  pursuance  of  the  Treaty  of  Utrecht,  been 
fixed  indefinitely  as  the  line  between  the  northern  British  Possess- 
sions  and  those  of  France,  including  Louisiana,  now  a  part  of  our 
territories.     There  was  no  reason  why,   if  the  two  countries  ex- 


148  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

tended  their  claims  westward,  the  same  line  should  not  be  con- 
tinned  to  the  Pacific  Ocean. 

'*So  far  as  discovei'v  gave  a  claim,  ours  to  the  whole  country  on 
the  waters  of  the  ('olumbia  River  was  indisputable.  It  had  de- 
rived its  name  from  that  of  the  American  ship  commanded  by  Capt, 
Gray,  who  had  first  discovered  and  entered  its  mouth. 

"It  was  first  explored  from  its  sources  to  the  ocean  by  Lewis 
and  Clark,  and  before  the  British  traders  from  Canada  had 
reached  any  of  its  waters;  for  it  was  now  ascertained  that  the 
river  Tacoutche  Tesse,  discovered  by  McKenzie,  and  which  he  had 
mistaken  for  the  Columbia,  was  not  a  branch  of  that  river,  but 
fell  into  the  sound  called  the  (Julf  of  Georgia.  The  settlement  at 
the  place  called  Astoria  was  also  the  first  permanent  settlement 
made  in  that  quarter."     (Am.  State  Papers,  Vol.  Y.,  p.  3S1.) 

It  is  plain  that  this  was  not  a  claim  that  Louisiana  extended 
to  the  Pacific,  but  only  an  application  of  the  xjrinciple  of  con- 
tiguity of  territory,  making  it  proper  that  if  the  two  nations  "ex- 
tended their  claims  beyond  the  Stony  Mountains,"  the  parallel  of 
4 J)  degrees  (which  it  was  then  supposed  had  been  fixed  in  pur- 
suance of  the  Treaty  of  Utrecht  as  the  boundary  of  Louisiana  on 
the  north)   should  be  extended  with  the  extension  of  their  claims. 

As  to  whether  any  bound,ary  was  ever  actually  run  as  the 
Treaty  of  ITtrecht  provided  should  be  done  (Cf.  Greenhow,  2d  Ed., 
Boston,  1845,  pp.  140,  281,  436-7-8-9;  also  George  Bancroft's  "His- 
tory of  the  Fnited  States,"  Vol.  III.,  p.  — ;  also  Caleb  Cushing's 
"Treaty  of  Washington,"  p.  208;  also  a  lecture  on  the  Oregon 
Question  by  Caleb  Gushing,  delivered  in  Boston  in  November, 
1845,  p.  10 ;  also  Gallatin's  Letters  on  the  Oregon  Question,  1846, 
p.  20)  there  certainly  seems  in  these  authorities  a  great  prepon- 
derance of  evidence  that  as  Greenhow  says,  '^if  Commissioners  ever 
were  appointed,  there  is  no  evidence  that  the  line  was  ever  run  by 
them,"  though  several  treaties  were  made  based  on  the  supposition 
that  commissioners  appointed  in  pursuance  of  that  treaty  had 
fixed  49  degrees  as  the  line. 

All  doubt  upon  the  question  is,  however,  now  ended,  and  Green- 
how's  position  that  "If  commissioners  were  appointed  there  is  no 
evidence  that  any  line  was  ever  run  by  them,"  is  proved  correct 
by  Chai)ter  XVII.  of  "The  Great  Company,  Being  a  History  of  the 
Honorable  Company  of  Adventurers  Trading  Into  Hudson's  Bay," 
by  Beckles  Willson,  Toronto,  189a»-  — "  ' 

From  this  it  a])pears  that  for  several  years  there  was  a  persist- 
ent exchange  of  letters  between  the  two  governments,  and  finally, 
September  8,  1719,  Daniel  Pulteney  and  Martin  Bladen,  Lords  of 
Trade,  were  appointed  commissioners  by  England  to  meet  the 
Mareschal  Conite  D'Estrees,  and  the  Abbe  Dubois,  Minister  and 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  149 

Secretary  of  State,  who  had  been  appointed  commissioners  by  the 
French  King.  Pulteney  and  Bladen  went  to  Paris,  and  Sir  Bibye 
Lake,  Governor  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  soon  after  followed  them, 
and  was  permitted  to  take  a  silent  part  in  the  conference. 

At  the  end  of  six  months  only  three  conferences  had  been  held, 
and  nothing  having  been  accomplished,  the  English  Commission- 
ers, thoroughly  discouraged,  returned  to  London,  and  thus  ended 
the  only  attempt  ever  made  to  run  the  boundary  line  between  the 
French  and  English  possessions  according  to  Article  X.  of  the 
Treaty  of  TTtrecht. 

In  the  negotiations  of  1818  the  British  did  not  claim  any  ex- 
clusive right  of  sovereignty  over  any  part  of  the  Northwest  Coast 
of  America,  but  only  that  the  whole  region  was  open  to  settlement 
by  them  or  by  any  other  civilized  nation,  and  suggested  the  line  of 
the  Columbia  as  a  convenient  boundary,  to  which  our  plenipoten- 
tiaries responded  with  the  offer  of  the  line  of  49  degrees  to  the 
Pacific. 

Of  course  the  British  Government  knew  perfectly  well  that  the 
line  of  49  degrees  had  never  been  fixed  as  the  northern  boundary 
of  Louisiana  "according  to  the  tenth  article  of  the  Treaty  of 
Utrecht,"  but  as  it  was  much  to  their  interest  to  have  our  negotia- 
tors believe  that  it  had  been  so  fixed,  they  very  naturally  said 
nothing  about  the  true  state  of  the  case,  and,  so  far  as  I  have  been 
able  to  ascertain,  Beckles  Willson's  "History  of  the  Great  Com- 
pany" contains  the  first  publication  of  the  facts  in  the  case. 

Only  forty-six  days  after  this  first  Treaty  of  Joint  Occupancy 
was  signed,  John  C.  Calhoun,  then  Secretary  of  War,  sent  to  the 
House  of  Kepresentatives  his  famous  report  on  "The  Trade  With 
the  Indians,"  recommending  radical  changes  in  the  methods  there- 
tofore in  use.  (This  report  covers  pp.  2455  to  24G6  of  Vol.  II.  of  An- 
nals of  Congress,  15th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.) 

On  pp.  2462-66  he  takes  up  "The  trade  with  the  Indians  who 
occupy  the  vast  region  extending  west  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,"  and 
recommends  "the  formation  of  a  company  with  sufficient  capital 
to  be  divided  into  shares  of  flOO  each,  and  to  be  limited  to  twenty 
years,"  and  after  stating  the  advantages  of  such  a  project,  says: 

"The  mere  objection  that  it  would  create  a  monopoly  ought  not 
to  outweigh  so  many  advantages.  The  trade  with  the  Indians  has 
never  been  opened  without  restrictions  to  our  citizens.  Licenses 
from  the  Government  have  at  all  times  been  required,  and  the  Gov- 
ernment has  itself  through  its  factories  to  a  considerable  extent 
monopolized  the  trade,  and  by  an  extension  of  its  capital  only 
might  engross  the  whole  of  it.  All  of  these  provisions,  however 
necessary  in  the  Indian  trade,  would  be  absurd  in  any  other  branch 
of  commerce. 


150  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

4  "Besides  the  profit  of  the  tnide  with  the  Indians  has  at  all 
times  been  confined  to  a  few  individuals,  and  it  is  highly  probable 
that  a  greater  ])ortion  of  the  eonininnity  would  participate  in  it 
by  carrying  it  on  in  the  manner  proposed  than  in  any  other  mode. 
In  fact,  absurd  as  commercial  monopoly  would  be  where  law  and 
authority  exist  to  repress  the  mischievous  effects  which  might 
spring  from  unbounded  rivali-y,  and  to  give  to  such  rivalry  salu- 
tary consequences,  just  in  the  same  degree  would  it  be  wise  and 
advantageous  to  carry  on  the  trade  under  consideration  by  an  in- 
corj)orated  company.  A  nation  discovers  its  wisdom  no  less  in  de- 
])arting  from  general  maxims  where  it  is  no  longer  wise  to  adhere 
to  them  than  in  adhering  to  them  in  ordinary  circumstances.  In 
fact  it  evinces  a  greater  effort  of  reason.  The  first  advance  of  a 
nation  is  marked  by  the  establishment  of  maxims  which  are  deemed 
universal,  but  which  further  experience  and  retlection  teach  to  be 
only  gener;il.  admitting  of  occasional  modifications  and  excep- 
tions." 

He  also  declares  that  in  this  case  a  monopoly  is  a  necessity  if 
we  would  compete  successfully  with  the  North  ^^'est  Co.,  which 
then  controlled  absolutely  the  fur  trade  of  the  country  west  of  the 
Stony  Mountains,  and  says  ''the  success  of  such  a  company  prop- 
erly conducted  scarcely  admits  of  a  doubt. 

"Our  position  in  regard  to  this  trade,  the  facility  which  the 
navigation  of  our  great  and  numerous  rivers  in  that  quarter  would 
afford,  the  protection  from  our  military  posts  would  speedily  de- 
stroy all  foreign  competition,  and  would  in  a  few  years  push  our 
trade  to  the  Pacific  Ocean.  The  most  profitable  fur  and  peltry 
trade  in  the  world  would  be  ours,  accompanied  with  a  decided  in- 
fluence over  the  numerous  and  warlike  tribes  inhabiting  those  ex- 
tensive regions.'' 

Whether  such  a  company  as  Calhoun  proposed  would  have 
succeeded,  as  he  prophesied,  in  a  struggle  versus  the  North  West 
Co.,  with  its  many  years  of  experience,  and  its  carefully  trained 
force — most  if  not  all  of  whose  leaders  had  risen  from  the  ranks 
through  long  apprenticeshi])  which  had  made  them  adepts  of  the 
first  rank  in  every  detail  of  the  Indian  trade,  is  by  no  means  cer- 
tain, but  it  is  certain,  as  20  years  of  subsequent  experience  fully 
demonstrated,  that  successful  competition  with  the  North  West 
Co.  or  the  Pludson's  Bay  Co.  (after  their  consolidation  in  1821) 
was  not  possible  in  any  other  way,  and  the  fact  that  Calhoun  as 
Secretary  of  War  under  Monroe  proposed  such  a  measure  imme- 
diately after  joint  occupation  was  agreed  on,  shows  how  far-sighted 
and  clear  of  vision  were  the  members  of  the  first  American  admin- 
istration which  had  been  brought  face  to  face  with  the  question 
of  how  to  secure  our  claim  against  the  adverse  claim  of  Great 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  151 

Britain  to  what  some  years  later  came  to  be  known  as  the  Oregon 
Territory,  but  was  still  generally  described  either  as  "The  Columbia 
River''  or  ''The  Northwest  Coast  of  America,"  for  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  though  our  negotiators  at  Ghent  were  instructed  to 
consent  to  no  claim  of  Great  Britain  to  territory  south  of  49  de- 
grees, nothing  was  said  at  Ghent  about  any  claim  of  Great  Britain 
on  the  Pacific  Coast,  and  the  restoration  of  Astoria  was  provided 
for  by  the  insertion  by  Henry  Clay  of  the  word  "possessions"  in  a 
general  provision  for  mutual  restitution  of  territory,  so  that  1818 
was  the  first  time  there  was  any  formal  official  denial  by  the  British 
Government  of  our  claim  to  the  valley  of  the  Columbia  River. 

Whatever  might  have  been  the  outcome  of  a  struggle  between 
the  North  West  Co.  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  representing 
British  interests  and  such  an  American  fur  trading  monopoly  as 
Calhoun  proposed,  had  the  measure  been  adopted,  the  spirit  of 
opposition  to  such  monopolies  was  so  determined  that  not  even 
Calhoun's  strong  argument,  albeit  it  was  plain  that  in  it  he  was 
merely  the  mouthpiece  of  Monroe's  administration,  was  sufiicient 
to  carry  the  measure  through  Congress,  and  so  the  plan  was  never 
tested. 

Negotiations  had  been  going  on  with  Spain  since  1810  regard- 
ing certain  claims  for  indemnity  which  our  citizens  had  against 
Spain,  and  similar  claims  which  Spain  advanced  on  behalf  of  her 
citizens  against  the  United  States,  and  certain  complaints  which 
Spain  made  against  us  for  violations  of  neutrality  laws  in  the 
wars  which  Spain  was  waging  upon  her  revolted  American  colonies, 
and  concerning  the  southern  and  western  boundaries  of  Louisiana, 
and  concerning  East  and  West  Florida,  which  we  desired  to 
purchase. 

The  interests  involved  were  vast  in  extent,  and  so  complicated 
with  various  considerations  involving  the  pride  and  honor  of  the 
two  nations  that  the  formulating  of  a  satisfactory  treaty  was  only 
reached  after  negotiations  whose  record  covers  506  pages  of  the 
Annals  of  Congress  and  Appendix  (15th  Congress,  2d  Session,  1818- 
1819,  Vol.  II.,  pp.  1630-2136),  or  203  of  the  large  folio  pages  of 
American  State  Papers,  Foreign  Relations,  Vol.  IV.,  pp.  422-625. 

February  1,  1819,  Don  Luis  de  Onis,  the  Spanish  Minister,  wrote 
Secretary  of  State  J.  Q.  Adams  as  follows: 

"Upon  this  view,  therefore,  of  the  subject,  and  considering  that 
the  motive  for  declining  to  admit  my  proposal  of  extending  the 
boundary  line  from  the  Missouri  to  the  Columbia  and  along  that 
river  to  the  Pacific  appears  to  be  the  wish  of  the  President,  to  in- 
clude within  the  limits  of  the  Union  all  the  branches  and  rivers 
emptying  into  the  said  river  Columbia.     I  will  adapt  my  proposals 


152  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

on  tliis  i>()int  so  as  I'ully  to  satisfy  the  essential  object,  namely,  that 
the  boinulaiy  lino  sliall  as  far  as  possible  be  natural  and  clearly 
defined,  and  leave  no  room  loi-  dispnte  to  the  inhabitants  on  either 
side." 

The  Secretary  of  State  thereupon  made  a  proposition  to  fix  the 
boundary  from  the  source  of  the  Arkansas  Kiver  along  the  41st 
parallel  of  north  latitude  to  the  Pacific,  to  which  De  Onis  responded 
j)roposing  the  43d  parallel,  and  finally  the  treaty  established  the 
parallel  of  42  degrees  north  latitude  as  the  boundary  from  the 
Eocky  Mountains  to  the  Pacific. 

The  treaty  ceded  us  East  and  West  Florida,  and  we  agreed  to 
pay  therefor  certain  claims  made  for  indemnity  by  our  citizens 
against  Spain  to  an  amount  not  exceeding  (|5,000,000)  five  mil- 
lion dollars,  and  to  release  Spain  for  any  responsibility  therefor, 
and  in  Article  .3  Spain  defined  the  south  and  west  boundary  of 
Louisiana  as  follows:  '"The  boundary  line  between  the  two  coun- 
tries west  of  the  Mississippi  shall  begin  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  at 
the  mouth  of  the  river  Sabine  in  the  sea,  continuing  north  along 
the  western  bank  of  the  river  to  the  32d  degree  of  latitude;  thence 
by  a  line  due  north  to  the  degree  of  latitude  where  it  strikes  the 
Rio  Roxo  of  Natchitoches,  or  Red  River;  then  following  the  course 
of  the  Rio  Roxo  westward  to  the  degree  of  longitude  100  west  from 
London  and  23  from  Washington ;  then  crossing  the  said  Red  River, 
and  running  thence  by  a  line  due  north  to  the  river  Arkansas ;  then 
following  the  southern  bank  of  the  Arkansas  to  its  source  in  lati- 
tude 42  north ;  and  thence  by  that  parallel  of  latitude  to  the  South 
Sea.  The  whole  being  as  laid  down  in  Melish's  map  of  the  United 
States  published  at  Philadelphia,  improved  to  the  1st  of  January, 
1818.  But  if  the  source  of  the  Arkansas  River  shall  be  found  to 
fall  noi'th  or  south  of  latitude  42,  then  the  line  shall  run  from  the 
said  source  due  south  or  north,  as  the  case  may  be.  till  it  meets  the 
said  parallel  of  42,  and  then  along  the  said  ])arallel  to  the  South 
Sea;  all  the  islands  in  the  Sabine  and  the  said  Red  and  Arkansas 
Rivers  throughout  the  course  thus  described  to  belong  to  the  United 
States ;  but  the  use  of  the  waters  and  the  navigation  of  the  Sabine 
to  the  sea,  and  of  the  said  Rio  Roxo  and  Arkansas  throughout  the 
extent  of  the  said  boundary  on  their  respective  banks  shall  be  com- 
mon to  the  respective  inhabitants  of  both  nations.  The  two  high 
contracting  parties  agree  to  cede  and  renounce  all  their  rights, 
claims  and  pretensions  to  the  territories  described  by  the  said  line; 
that  is  to  say,  the  United  States  hereby  cede  to  His  Catholic 
3Iajesty,  and  renounce  forever  all  their  rights,  claims  and  pre- 
tensions to  the  territories  lying  south  and  west  of  the  above  de- 
scribed line,  and  in  like  numner  His  Catholic  Majesty  cedes  to 
the  said  United  States  all  his  rights,  claims  and  pretensions  to  any 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  153 

territory  east  and  north  of  the  said  line,  and  for  himself,  his  heirs 
and  successors  renounces  all  claim  to  the  said  territories  forever." 

The  treaty  provided  for  a  commission  to  run  this  boundary  line 
and  mark  it  where  needful,  but  Mexico  so  soon  won  her  independ- 
ence that  this  provision  was  never  carried  into  effect.  This  treaty 
was  ratified  by  the  Senate  Feb.  24,  1819,  and  proclaimed  by  the 
President  Feb.  25,  1819,  but  for  some  reason  Spain  did  not  ratify 
iill  Oct.  21,  1820,  and  the  account  of  that  ratification  by  Spain,  and 
the  concurrence  therein  of  our  government,  with  all  the  correspond- 
ence between  the  two  governments  about  the  subject  between  Feb, 
24,  1819,  and  Oct.  24,  1820,  was  communicated  to  the  Senate  Feb. 
14,  1821,  and  printed  as  Doc.  321,  16th  Congress,  2d  Session,  and 
it  covers  53  of  the  large  folio  pages  of  American  State  Papers, 
Foreign  Relations  (Vol.  V.,  pp.  650-703.) 

The  full  text  of  this  "Treaty  of  Amity,  Indemnification  and 
Limits"  in  Spanish  and  English  is  also  to  be  found  as  Doc.  347, 
16th  Congress,  2d  Session,  in  American  State  Papers,  Foreign  Re- 
lations (Vol.  v.,  p.  127,  et  seq.) 

This  treaty  ceding  to  us  all  of  Spain's  claims  to  the  valley  of 
Columbia's  river  removed  the  only  cloud  on  our  right  to  it,  and 
gave  us  at  last  a  complete  title  to  it  on  paper. 

Had  we  made  and  concluded  this  treaty  with  Spain,  say  in 
1817,  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  Monroe's  Administration 
would  have  consented  to  any  form  of  Joint  Policy  about  Oregon, 
but  at  the  very  time  that  the  negotiations  were  progressing  in  Lon- 
don which  resulted  in  the  first  Joint  Policy  treaty,  these  negotia- 
tions with  Spain  were  in  a  very  critical  condition,  which  explains 
why  our  diplomats — not  desiring  to  offend  Spain  and  so  fail  to 
obtain  the  Floridas  and  a  settlement  of  the  south  and  west  bound- 
ary of  the  Louisiana  Territory  did  not  claim,  at  London,  that  we 
had  "an  absolute  title"  to  the  Columbia  River  country,  but  only 
that  "our  title  was  absolute  as  against  Great  Britain." 

Within  a  year  after  Spain  ratified  this  treaty  her  dominion 
was  finally  overthrown  over  all  the  territory  contiguous  to  the 
boundary  therein  fixed. 

Had  the  line  of  41  degrees  which  our  government  proposed  west 
of  the  Rocky  Mountains  been  adopted,  it  would  have  included  in 
our  country  all  the  land  drained  by  the  southern  branches  of  the 
Columbia,  but  the  line  of  42  degrees  left  the  extreme  head  waters 
of  a  few  of  the  small  southerly  branches  of  the  Snake  River,  in 
what  is  now  Northwestern  Utah  and  Northern  Nevada  in  Spanish 
Territory. 

There  has  been  much  discussion  as  to  whether  or  not  the  Louisi- 
ana Purchase  included  the  Oregon  Territory,  and  several  who  have 
taken  the   aftirmative   have   depended  entirely   or   mainly   on   this 


154  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON         | 

treaty  to  sustain  their  opiiiiou,  but  it  seems  a  very  weak  support 
for  their  conclusion. 

Had  this  treaty  been  nejjotiated  merely  to  define  the  limits  of 
Louisiana  it  would  turnish  strong  if  not  conclusive  evidence  in 
favor  of  the  contention  that  Oregon  was  included  in  Li>uisiana.  But 
it  was  a  treaty  covering  the  cession  of  Florida,  the  quiestion  of  claims 
of  Spain  versus  the  United  States,  of  the  United' States  versus 
S]>ain  for  a  long  term  of  years,  and  about  various  "i^ctj,  which  each 
claimed  as  wrongful  on  the  part  of  the  other,  and  of  tne  amount  of 
compensation  due  for  such  wrongs,  and  of  payment  for  the  cession 
of  Florida,  and  for  the  defining  of  the  limits  of  all  of  the  territories 
of  the  two  nations  which  w^ere  then  contiguous,  and  it  nowhere  de- 
clares that  the  limit  fixed  is  only  the  limit  of  the  Louisiana  Pur- 
chase, and  I  think  whoever  will  read  carefully  the^whole  of  the 
negotiations  preceding  Ihe  treaty  in  so  far  as  they  reTaffe  to  the 
questions  of  territory  ceded,  and  limits  defined,  and  compensation 
to  be  paid,  and  will  examine  with  care  the  instructions  ^iven  to 
our  negotiators  in  '23-'24  and  '2C-'27,  will  be  satisfied  that  in  the 
opinion  of  Monroe  and  J.  Q.  Adams,  wiio  certainly  *^ught  to  know 
the  truth  al)out  the  matter  better  than  any  one  eIse,|no  ])art  of 
Oregon  was  included  in  the  Louisiana  Purchase. 

Consult  especially  on  this  point  the  letter  of  J.  Q.  Adams,  as 
Secretary  of  State  under  IMonroe,  to  Gallatin  and  Kush,  our  Envoys 
to  Great  Britain,  dated  July  22,  1823,  in  Doc.  417,  Vol.  V.,  American 
State  Papers,  Foreign  Kelations,  pp.  71)0-793.  The  letter  covers  two 
folio  printed  pages,  and  is  devoted  to  the  subject  of  our  title  to 
Oregon,  which  it  declares  to  depend  on  Gray's  discovery  and  en- 
trance of  the  mouth  of  Columbia  River,  the  exploration  of  the  river 
from  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Pacific  by  Lewis  and  Clark, 
and  farther  exploration  and  the  occupancy  of  its  valley  by  the 
Astor  party,  the  restoration  of  Astoria  by  England  in  accordance 
with  the  Treaty  of  Ghent,  and  the  acquisition  of  the  claims  of  Spain 
by  this  "Treaty  of  Amity,  Limits  and  Indemnification"  (more  com- 
monly known  as  the  Florida  Treaty),  but  does  not  so  much  as  men- 
tion the  Louisiana  Purchase. 

After  most  exasperating  delays  Spain  finally  delivered  Florida 
to  us  on  July  17,  1821,  and  the  correspondence  relating  to  it  makes 
67  more  folio  pages  in  American  State  Papers,  Foreign  Relations, 
Vol.  v..  Doc.  324. 

Before  the  delivery  of  Florida  was  made.  Dr.  Floyd  of  Virginia 
began  Congressional  action  on  the  Oregon  question  (though  the 
region  was  not  yet  called  Oregon,  but  the  Columbia  River  country) 
by  moving  on  Dec.  19,  1820,  for  the  apj)ointinent  of  a  committee 
of  three  to  "inquire  into  the  settlements  on  the  Pacific  Ocean,  and 
the  expediency  of  occupying  the  Columbia  River,"  and  on  Jan.  2i), 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  155 

1821,  the  committee  made  a  report  of  15  pages,  accompanied  with 
a  bill  to  authorize  ''the  occupation  of  the  Columbia  River  and  to 
regulate  trade  and  intercourse  with  the  Indian  tribes  thereon."  The 
report  is  No.  45,  Reports  of  Committees,  House  of  Representatives, 
16th  Congress,  2d  Session,  1820-21,  and  was  a  very  able  document, 
replete  with  valuable  statistics  and  urging  that  our  government 
should  take  possession  of  the  region,  and  "the  fur  trade,  the  Asiatic 
trade  and  the  i)reservation  of  our  own  territory  were  the  advan- 
tages proposed."  (For  a  full  account  see  Annals  of  Congress,  IGth,, 
Congress,  2d  Session,  and  Reports  of  Committees,  as  above;  also 
Chapter  V.  of  "Benton's  Thirty  Years'  View."  (Benton  says:  "Mr. 
Ramsay  Crooks  of  New  York"  (who  discovered  the  South  Pass  in 
1812)  "and  Mr.  Russell  Farnham  of  Massachusetts,  who  had  been 
in  the  employment  of  Mr.  John  Jacob  Astor  in  founding  Astoria 
.  .  .  had  their  quarters  at  the  same  hotel  where  Dr.  Floyd  and 
I  had  ours  .  .  .  and  their  conversation  full  of  information 
upon  a  new  and  interesting  country  was  eagerly  devoured  by  the 
ardent  spirit  of  Floyd."  Floyd's  Report  (p.  11)  says:  "The  prac- 
ticability of  a  speedy,  safe  and  easy  communication  with  the  Pacific 
is  no  longer  a  matter  of  doubt  or  conjecture;  from  information  not 
to  be  doubted,  the  Rocky  Mountains  at  this  time  in  several  places 
is  so  smooth  and  open  that  the  labor  of  10  men  for  20  days  would 
enable  a  wagon  with  its  usual  freight  to  pass  with  great  facility 
from  the  navigable  waters  of  the  Missouri  to  that  of  the  Columbia." 

The  bill  was  referred  to  the  committee  of  the  whole  House. 

July  2,  1821,  less  than  six  months  after  Floyd's  First  Report,  and 
only  15  days  before  Spain  finally  executed  the  treaty  of  Feb.  22, 
1819,  fixing  42  degrees  as  the  north  boundary  of  California  and 
the  south  boundary  of  the  "Columbia  River  country,"  an  Act  of 
Parliament  was  passed  which  resulted  in  the  consolidation  of  the 
North  West  Co.,  the  great  Canadian  fur  company,  with  its  older 
and  wealthier  and  less  enterprising  rival,  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 

Of  the  long  contentions,  with  no  little  bloodshed — the  plots  and 
counter  plots,  the  ruinous  expenditure  of  the  resources  of  both  com- 
panies, and  the  resulting  demoralization  of  the  Indians,  which  re- 
sulted in  the  consolidation  of  these  companies,  I  shall  treat  some- 
what in  detail  in  the  chapter  on  "The  Truth  About  the  Relation  of 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  the  American  Exploration,  Occupation  and 
Settlement  of  Oregon,"  and  it  only  needs  to  be  said  here  that  though 
the  union  was  one  of  equality  as  to  capital  and  as  to  treatment 
of  the  owners  of  each  company,  the  North  West  Co.'s  name  van- 
ished, and  thenceforth  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  which  had  never  before 
had  any  posts  west  of  the  Stony  Mountains,  occupied  all  the  North 
West  Co.'s  posts,  not  only  in  Oregon,  but  everywhere  else  west  of 
the  Continental  Divide,  and,  as  against  British  subjects,  had  an 


150  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

absolute  iii<»ii()i)oly  of  the  trade  with  !ii(li;iiis,  over  a  region  hirger 
than  the  rnited  States  then  possessed.  In  Oregon  its  legal  mon- 
opoly was  only  ;is  to  British  subjects,  Americans  by  the  treaty  of 
ISIS  having  there  exactly  the  same  rights  as  British  subjects,  but 
outside  of  Oregon  their  monopoly  was  absolute  over  all  of  what 
is  now  British  America  that  is  situated  north  and  west  of  the 
provinces  of  Quebec  and  Ontario. 

December  10,  1821,  at  the  beginning  of  the  first  session  of  the 
17th  Congress,  Floyd,  Baylies  and  Scott  were  appointed  a  commit- 
tee of  the  House  of  Representatives  to  ''inquire  into  the  expediency 
of  occupying  the  Columbia  River  and  the  territoi-y  of  the  Cnited 
States  adjacent  thereto,  and  of  regulating  the  trade  with  the  Indian 
tribes,  and  that  they  have  leave  to  report  by  bill  or  otherwise."  They 
reported  a  bill  (p.  744,  Annals  of  Congress,  17th  Congress,  1st  Ses- 
sion) which  was  referred  to  the  committee  of  the  whole,  and  at 
the  2d  Session  it  was  debated  with  great  ability  and  vigor,  the  re- 
port of  the  debates  covering  GO  columns  in  the  House  and  Si/o 
columns  in  the  Senate.  (Cf.  Annals  of  Congress,  17th  Congress, 
2d  Session,  1822-23.) 

Pages  390-409  contain  a  speech  of  Floyd  of  Virginia,  in  which, 
after  entering  fully  into  the  great  advantages  we  should  derive  by 
the  control  of  the  fur  trade,  the  benefit  to  the  w'haling  industry 
then  Jind  long  after  carried  on  extensively  in  the  Pacific,  and  the 
great  profits  of  the  China  trade,  all  of  which  he  was  sure  w^ould  be 
promoted  by  the  passage  of  the  bill,  he  proceeds  to  answer  the 
bugbenr  of  the  inaccessibility  of  the  Oregon  country  as  follows: 
"The  route  to  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  is  easy,  safe  and  expedi- 
tious. We  all  recollect  distinctly  the  delays,  dangers  and  difficulties 
which  attended  the  merchant  on  his  first  opening  the  trade  to  Ken- 
tucky; in  those  days  much  preparation  w-as  necessary,  and  from 
30  to  35  days  were  exhausted  in  getting  to  market;  his  goods  were 
then  transported  to  Fort  Pitt  (now  Pittsburg)  or  to  Wheeling  by 
wagon,  creeping  on  with  ax)palling  slowness;  if  there  was  a  freshet 
in  the  Ohio  he  arrived  in  season,  but  sorrow  and  ruin  attended  him 
if  his  goods  did  not  arrive  in  time  for  this  advantage,  his  spring 
supplies  arrived  in  the  fall,  and  his  fall  goods  detained  sometimes 
until  the  spring.  Even  now,  an  intelligent  friend  from  Tennessee, 
who  usually  sits  on  the  other  side  of  the  House,  tells  me  that  the 
merchants  of  Nashville  take  their  wagoners'  receipts  to  deliver  their 
goods  at  that  place  in  from  30  to  50  days.  From  Louisville  in 
Kentucky  down  to  New  Orleans  formerly  required  a  voyage  of  from 
30  to  40  days,  and  using  on  the  voyage  up  the  river  w^hat  they 
called  a  barge,  it  required  them  90  days  to  make  the  trijt  in  what 
they  called  good  time.  Now,  however,  by  steamboat  navigation, 
they  make  the  voyage  down  in  seven  days  and  ui»  in  10  days.    This 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  157 

I  believe  is  the  average  voyage  between  the  places.  Now,  Mr.  Chair- 
man, we  cannot  be  mistaken  when  we  apply  the  same  calculations 
to  the  route  to  the  mouth  of  the  Oregon,  as  steamboat  navigation 
we  all  know  to  be  sate  and  sure.  Wherefore  it  will  take  a  steam- 
boat 24  days  to  arrive  at  the  Falls  of  the  Missouri,  thence  I  allow 
a  wagon  14  days  to  travel  200  miles  to  the  mouth  of  Clark's  River, 
thence  7  days  to  the  mouth  of  the  Oregon,  making  the  time  nec- 
essary for  the  trip  44  days.  To  return  the  boat  would  reach 
Clark's  Fork  in  14  days,  double  the  time  she  would  go  down;  the 
wagon  would  return  to  the  Falls  of  the  Missouri  in  13  days,  thence 
the  boat  Avould  arrive  at  St.  Louis  in  half  the  time  necessary  for 
her  upward  voyage,  which  would  be  12  days,  making  the  w^hole  time 
39  days.  If  there  were  any  doubt  existing  in  the  mind  of  any  gen- 
tleman, surely  it  might  be  done  away  when  we  recur  to  the  fact  of  a 
wagon  having  already  passed  from  St.  Louis  to  Santa  Fe  and  re- 
turned in  the  course  of  the  last  summer,  bringing  with  it  the  sum  of 
$10,000  as  the  profit  of  the  trip."  .  .  .  "As  to  distance,  I  have 
already  shown  that  in  point  of  time  the  mouth  of  the  Oregon  or 
Columbia  is  not  farther  distant  than  Louisville  was  30  years  ago 
from  New  York,  or  St.  Louis  was  20  years  ago  from  Philadelphia." 

Baylies  of  Massachusetts,  on  Dec.  18,  1822,  made  a  strong  argu- 
ment for  the  bill,  and  showed  that  within  the  recollection  of  mem- 
bers who  heard  him  the  whole  course  of  westward  migration 
— first  to  Berkshire  County,  in  Massachusetts,  next  to  the  Genessee 
Valley  in  New  York,  then  to  the  eastern  side,  and  later  to  the  west- 
ern side  of  the  Mississippi  Valley — had  met  with  the  same  opposi- 
tion and  prophecies  of  disaster.  On  January  25,  1823,  the  bill  was 
laid  on  the  table  by  76  to  61,  that  is,  a  change  of  eight  votes  would 
have  passed  the  bill  through  the  House. 

Undoubtedly  there  was  no  intention  of  passing  the  bill,  as  it 
would  have  been  a  plain  violation  of  the  treaty  of  1818  (which 
did  not  expire  till  October  20,  1828),  and  the  real  object  aimed  at 
was  to  keep  the  subject  before  the  public,  and  inform  the  nation 
as  to  the  merits  of  the  case  in  anticipation  of  the  time  when  either 
the  expiration  of  the  convention  of  1818,  or  the  negotiation  of  a 
new  treaty  in  advance  of  that  date  should  give  us  the  right  to  oc- 
cupy the  Columbia  River  country. 

Why  Floyd  chose  the  Missouri  River  route  and  overland  to 
Clark's  Fork  of  the  Columbia  is  evident,  when  we  remember  that 
our  fur  traders  all  at  this  time  went  up  the  Missouri,  Ashley  not 
leading  his  first  party  up  the  Platte  and  over  the  "Stony  Moun- 
tains," through  South  Pass  into  the  southeast  corner  of  the  Ore- 
gon Territory,  till  the  summer  of  1824 — eighteen  months  after  this 
speech  was  made. 

Turning  to  Annals  of  Congress,  18th  Cong.,  1   Sess.,  1823-24, 


158  ACQUISITIOX    OF    OREGON 

Vol.  1.,  p.  890,  we  find  that  December  29,  1823,  on  motion  of  Mr. 
Floyd,  another  select  committee  on  the  occupation  of  the  Colum- 
bia River  was  ap])ointed,  consisting  of  Floyd,  Gurley,  Scott,  Hay- 
den,  JJas.sett,  Frost  and  Baylies.  They  reported  a  bill  January  19, 
1824,  which  was  read  twice,  and  referred  to  the  committee  of  the 
whole.  This  bill  passed  the  llouse  by  113  to  57,  but  as  it  was  in  plain 
violation  of  the  convention  of  October  20,  1818,  it  was  finally  laid 
on  the  table  in  the  Senate  by  25  to  14,  having  served  its  obvious 
purpose  of  keeping  alive  the  interest  of  the  people  in  the  Columbia 
River  country,  and  spreading  before  them  a  great  deal  of  informa- 
tion in  the  debate  on  the  bill,  (the  report  of  which  fills  261/0  col- 
umns in  '•J)ebates  in  Congress,"  not  ''Benton's  Abridgments  of 
Debates,"  which  should  never  be  depended  on  by  any  student  of 
American  history,)  and  in  the  report  of  the  committee  made  April 
15,  1824,  commonly  known  as  Floyd's  second  report.  This  report 
(which  was  made  merely  to  place  before  the  public  General  Jesup's 
letter)  is  to  be  found  on  p.  2345  of  Vol.  11.  of  ''Debates  in  Con- 
gress" for  this  session,  and  is  very  brief,  saying  in  substance  that 
so  much  had  previously  been  submitted  for  the  information  of  the 
country  that  although  the  subject  was  of  great  importance  they 
now  only  deemed  it  necessary  to  present  a  view  of  the  difficulties 
which  would  probably  present  themselves  in  an  attempt  by  us  to 
occupy  the  country,  and  the  manner  in  which  they  can  be  over- 
come. To  obtain  information  on  these  points  they  had  written  to 
Brigadier  General  T.  S.  Jesup,  Quartermaster  General  of  the  army, 
and  his  reply  they  printed,  and  declared  that  they  had  adopted  it 
as  part  of  their  report. 

Jesup  wrote:  "T  should  consider  a  line  of  ])osts  extending  from 
Council  Blufl^'s  entirely  across  the  continent  necessary. 

"A  post  should  be  established  at  the  Mandan  village,  because 
there  the  Missouri  approaches  within  a  short  distance  of  the  Brit- 
ish territory,  and  it  would  have  the  effect  of  holding  in  check  the 
Hudson's  Bay  and  North  West  Cos.,  and  controlling  the  Ricka- 
rees,  Mandans,  etc.  ...  A  post  at  or  near  the  head  of  naviga- 
tion on  the  Missouri  would  control  the  Blackfeet  Indians,  protect 
our  traders,  enable  us  to  remove  those  of  the  British  companies 
from  our  territories,  etc.  ...  On  the  latter  river"  (/.  c,  the 
Columbia)  "and  its  tributaries  there  should  be  at  least  three  posts. 

"They  would  afford  protection  to  our  traders,  and  on  the  expira- 
tion of  the  privileges  granted  to  British  subjects  to  trade  on  the 
waters  of  the  Columbia,  would  enable  us  to  remove  them  from  our 
territory,  and  to  secure  the  whole  to  our  own  citizens." 
j^  These  declarations  about  using  the  troops  on  the  Missouri  to 
"immediately  remove  the  British  traders  from  our  territories,"  and 
to  use  them  to  remove  the  British  traders  in  the  Colhmbia  River 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  159 

country  '*oii  the  expiration  of  the  privileges  granted  them"  (i  e., 
after  October  20,  1828),  were  the  things  to  which  the  British  pleni- 
potentiaries objected,  as  stated  by  Rush  (on  p.  55G,  Vol.  V.,  Am. 
State  Papers  on  For.  Rel.).  They  also  objected  to  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  as  applied  to  the  non-colonization  of  the  northwest  coast 
by  them.  Jesup  says  further  that  '"the  expenses  of  the  posts  might 
be  greatly  diminished  by  cultivating  as  at  Council  Bluffs,  and  build- 
ing mills  and  keeping  cattle  for  labor  and  for  subsistence,"  and 
urges  that  operations  should  commence  at  once,  saying:  ''The 
British  companies  are  wealthy  and  powerful ;  their  establishments 
extend  from  Hudson's  Bay  and  Lake  Superior  to  the  Pacific,  many 
of  them  within  our  territory.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  they  would 
surrender  those  advantages  without  a  struggle,  and  though  they 
should  not  engage  in  hostilities  themselves,  they  might  render  all 
the  Indians  in  that  extensive  region  hostile.  .  .  .  That  the 
route  from  the  Council  Bluffs  is  practicable  has  been  proved  by 
the  enterprise  of  more  than  one  of  our  citizens.  It,  no  doubt,  pre- 
sents difficulties,  but  difficulties  are  not  impossibilities.  We  have 
only  to  refer  to  the  pages  of  our  history  to  learn  that  many  opera- 
tions, infinitely  more  arduous,  have  been  accomplished  by  Ameri- 
cans. The  march  of  Arnold  to  Quebec,  or  of  Gen.  Clark  to  Vin- 
cennes,  during  the  Revolutionary  war,  exceeded  greatly  in  fatigue, 
privation,  difficulty  and  danger  the  proposed  operation,  and  I  be- 
lieve I  may  say  without  fear  of  contradiction  that  the  detachment 
might  be  supplied,  during  the  whole  route,  with  less  difficulty  than 
in  the  war  of  1756  was  experienced  in  supplying  the  forces  operat- 
ing under  Gen.  Washington  and  Gen.  Braddock,  versus  the  French 
and  English  on  the  Ohio." 

In  that  brief  sentence,  "difficulties  are  not  impossibilities,"  is 
the  key  to  the  whole  question  of  a  wagon  road  to  Oregon,  and  in 
this  letter,  written  in  April,  1824,  is  everything  of  any  importance 
about  establishing  a  line  of  posts  to  Oregon,  and  having  them  raise 
provisions  and  stock,  which  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  Story  have  for  years  urged  as  proof  of  Whitman's  great 
ability  and  foresight,  because  191/2  years  later,  in  a  letter  to  the 
Secretary  of  War,  he  enclosed  a  draft  of  a  bill,  which  Nixon  and 
Mowry  say  was  for  the  ''Organization  of  Oregon,"  though,  in  fact, 
from  beginning  to  end  it  said  nothing  about  ''the  organization  of 
Oregon,"  and  was  by  him  properly  entitled  "A  bill  to  promote  safe 
intercourse  with  the  Territory  of  Oregon,  to  suppress  violent  acts 
of  aggression  on  the  part  of  certain  Indian  tribes  west  of  the  In- 
dian Territory,  Neocho,  better  protect  the  revenue,  for  the  trans- 
portation of  the  mail,  and  for  other  purposes"  (Cf.  for  this  letter 
and  draft  of  the  bill,  Tr.  Oregon  Pioneer  Association,  1891,  pp.  69- 
78,  where  it  first  appeared  in  print  without  the  false  claim  of  Nixon 


160  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

and  Mowry  that  it  suggested  a  plan  loi-  the  "Organization  of  Ore- 
gon.") Jesup  in  1824,  clearly  recognizes  (what  all  our  statesmen 
])erfectly  well  nnderslood)  the  unwillingness  of  the  British  to  sur- 
render Oregon,  the  hold  the  Hudson's  Jiay  Co.  had  upon  its  fur 
trade — then  its  only  valuable  resource — the  need  of  a  line  of  posts, 
and  the  possibility  of  cultivating,  and  grazing  about  them,  1o  sub- 
sist their  garrisons,  and  his  letter  did  not  contain  the  various  im- 
practicable crochets  of  ^Vhitnian's  scheme,  which  were  so  i)atent  to 
the  Government  that  his  letter  and  draft  of  a  bill  were  promptly 
jjigeon-holed  in  the  archives  of  the  War  Department,  and,  so  far 
as  can  be  ascertained,  never  even  read  by  any  one  for  more  than 
forty  years  thereafter,  till  some  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Legend 
looking  in  vain  for  any  proof  in  the  archives  of  the  Government 
that  any  act  of  Whitman's  had  in  any  way  affected  governmental 
action  about  Oregon  unearthed  this  letter,  somewhere  about  1885; 
while  it  is  certain  that  not  a  single  one  of  his  recommendations 
was  ever  even  submitted  in  a  bill  for  discussion  in  Congress,  much 
less  enacted  into  law.  There  is  much  of  interest  in  the  extended 
debate  on  this  bill  in  the  second  session  of  the  18th  Congress,  but 
si>ace  will  only  i)ermit  the  following  extracts: 

December  30,  1824,  Floyd,  after  describing  some  easier  passes 
than  those  over  which  Lewis  and  Clark  went,  which  had  been  found 
by  later  adventurers,  continues:  "Through  these  you  pass  with 
ease  and  safety,  so  much  so  that  I  have  the  most  jjerfect  confidence 
that  even  now  a  wagon  with  the  usual  freight  could  be  taken  from 
this  capital  to  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia.  Besides  these  passes 
there  is  still  another,  which,  though  longer  to  the  upper  part  of 
that  river,  is  yet  better,  where  even  the. feeble  difficulties  there  en- 
countered are  here  almost  annihilated.  This  route,  pursued  by 
many  now  engaged  in  that  trade,  holds  its  course  from  Missouri 
u]»  the  Kansas  River,  continuing  some  distance  up  the  Republican 
fork  of  that  river,  then  falling  on  to  the  river  Platte;  thence  en- 
tirely up  that  river  to  its  source,  where  the  Oregon  or  Rocky  Moun- 
tains sink  into  a  bed  of  sand,  without  water  or  timber,  for  the 
space  of  sixty  miles  smooth  and  level." 

This  fairly  accurate  description  of  the  route  up  the  Platte  Val- 
ley and  across  the  Stony  Mountains,  and  over  the  South  Pass  into 
the  Oregon  Territory,  given  in  Congress  in  December,  1824,  only 
a  few  weeks  after  news  had  reached  St.  Louis  of  Ashley's  success 
in  leading  the  first  party  of  fur  traders  from  the  States  by  that 
route  to  the  Great  Salt  Lake  and  back  to  Missouri,  shows  how 
speedily  the  National  Government  was  informed  of  the  discoveries 
of  the  fur  traders  in  exploring  the  Rocky  Mountain  regions,  while 
the  fact  that  it  was  not  till  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1824  that 
Ashlev  thus  rediscovered  the  South  Pass   (the  discoverv  of  which 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  161 

by  Ramsay,  Crooks  and  Company  in  1812  had  not  then  been  pub- 
lished) shows  why  Jesup,  in  his  letter  written  in  April,  1824,  pro- 
posed a  line  of  posts  and  the  sending  of  troops  up  the  Missouri, 
and  thence  across  the  Stony  Mountains  and  down  Clark's  Fork  of 
the  Columbia. 

Benton's  great  speech,  March  1,  1825,  on  this  bill  in  the  Senate, 
at  the  very  end  of  this  second  session  of  the  18th  Congress,  I  pre- 
fer to  discuss  in  connection  with  his  opposition  to  the  treaty  of 
August  6,  1827,  renewing  the  third  section  of  the  treaty  of  1818. 

Before  taking  up  the  action  of  the  19th  and  20th  Congresses  on 
this  question,  it  seems  best  to  return  to  the  field  of  diplomacy  and 
consider  the  negotiations  of  1823-24  with  both  Russia  and  Great 
Britain. 

It  was  at  first  hoped  by  our  Government  that  there  might  be 
joint  negotiations  between  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain 
with  Russia,  but  it  soon  became  evident  that  Great  Britain  was 
unwilling  to  unite  with  us,  and  so  that  effort  was  abandoned  and 
each  nation  negotiated  separately  with  Russia. 

The  result  of  our  negotiations  with  Russia  was  the  treaty  of 
April  5,  1824,  Article  3  of  which  is  as  follows:  "It  is  moreover 
agreed  that  hereafter  there  shall  not  be  formed  by  the  citizens  of 
the  United  States  or  under  the  authority  of  said  States,  any  estab- 
lishment upon  the  northwest  coast  of  America,  nor  on  any  of  the 
islands  adjacent,  to  the  north  of  54  degrees  and  40  minutes  of 
north  latitude;  and  that  in  the  same  manner  there  shall  be  none 
formed  by  Russian  subjects  or  under  the  authority  of  Russia  south 
of  the  same  parallel."  (Cf.  Vol.  V.,  Am.  State  Papers,  For.  Rel., 
Doc.  No.  384.)  This  fixed  finally  the  utmost  northern  limit  of 
what  soon  after  came  to  be  called  the  Oregon  Territory  at  54  de- 
grees and  40  minutes. 

No  agreement  could  be  arrived  at  with  Great  Britain  as  to  a 
boundary  for  our  territory  on  the  northwest  coast,  but  the  record 
of  the  negotiations  shows  that  very  substantial  progress  was  made 
in  that  direction  by  the  offer  of  Great  Britain  to  surrender  all 
claim  to  more  than  four-fifths  of  the  territory  south  of  49  degrees, 
by  offering  us  the  line  of  49  degrees  from  the  "Stony  Mountains  to 
the  most  northeasterly  branch  of  the  Columbia,  known  as  McGilli- 
vray's  River" — and  thence  that  stream  and  the  Columbia — to  the 
Pacific,  thus  limiting  the  real  contest  from  this  time  on  to  that 
part  of  what  is  now  the  State  of  Washington,  which  is  north  and 
west  of  the  Columbia  River. 

Another  very  interesting  and  important  feature  of  these  nego- 
tiations is  that  at  the  very  beginning  of  them,  in  two  letters  of 
Secretary  of  State  John  Q.  Adams,  dated  July  22,  1823,  one  ad- 
dressed to  Henry  Middleton,  our  Minister  to  Russia,  and  the  other 


I(i2  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

to  liiiliard  Kush,  our  .Minister  [o  London,  was  the  first  statement 
of  so  much  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  as  declared  the  American  conti- 
nents no  longer  open  to  colonization  by  European  p;overnnients. 

As  no  advocate  of  the  \\'hitnian  myth  has  ever  stated  those 
{)oints  with  any  such  clearness  and  detail  as  to  inform  his  i-eaders 
of  the  great  importance  of  these  negotiations,  and  their  signifi- 
cance as  showing  the  inflexible  determination  of  our  Government 
in  1824 — twelve  years  before  the  Whitman  Mission  was  established, 
and  not  only  at  a  lime  when  not  a  single  American  citizen  was  re- 
siding at  any  point  in  the  Oregon  Territory,  but  eight  years  before 
the  lirst  overland  migration  under  Wyth  went  there — to  insist  on 
no  line  south  of  49  degrees  as  the  northern  boundary  of  our  terri- 
tory on  the  Pacific,  it  seems  necessary  to  quote  from  the  official 
record  of  this  negotiation  at  some  length. 

Am.  [State  Papers,  For.  ReL,  Vol.  V.,  Doc.  384,  contains  ''Corre- 
spondence and  Convention  with  Russia  Relative  to  Navigation  and 
Trade  on  the  Northwest  Coast  of  America,  Communicated  to  the 
Senate  December  15,  1824,"  covering  pp.  432  to  471.  Pages  436-7 
contain  ''Letter  of  instructions  to  Henry  Middleton,  our  Minister 
to  Russia,  from  John  Q.  Adams,  Seeretary  of  State,  dated  Wash- 
ington, July  22,  1823,  from  which  the  following  are  extracts:  (P. 
43Gj  "So  far  as  prior  discovery  can  constitute  a  foundation  of  right, 
the  papers  which  I  have  referred  to  prove  that  it  belongs  to  the 
United  States  so  far  as  49  degrees  north  latitude,  by  the  transfer 
to  them  of  the  rights  of  Spain.  There  is,  however,  no  part  of  the 
globe  where  the  mere  fact  of  discovery  could  be  held  to  give  weaker 
claims  than  on  the  northwest  coast."  .  .  .  (p.  437)  "The  right 
of  the  I'nited  States  from  the  42d  to  the  49th  parallel  of  latitude 
on  the  I*acific  Ocean  we  consider  as  unquestionable,  being  founded, 
first  on  the  acquisition  by  the  treaty  of  February  22,  1819,  of  all 
the  rights  of  Spain ;  second,  by  the  discovery  of  the  Columbia  River, 
first  from  the  sea,  at  its  mouth,  and  then  by  land  by  Lewis  and 
Clark;  and  third,  by  the  settlement  at  its  mouth  in  1811. 

"This  territory  is  to  the  United  States  of  an  importance  which 
no  possession  in  North  America  can  be  of  to  any  European  nation, 
not  only  as  it  is  but  the  continuity  of  their  possessions  from  the 
Atlantic  to  the  l*acific  Ocean,  but  as  it  offers  their  inhabitants  the 
means  of  establishing  hereafter  water  communications  from  the 
one  to  the  other." 

(P.  445)  Among  the  paj>ers  communicated  with  the  foregoing 
letter  of  instructions  is  "(No.  3  k. )  Observations  on  the  claim  of 
Russia  to  territorial  possessions  on  the  continent  of  North  Amer- 
ica."    (pp.  443  to  446  inc.) 

On  ]).  44.")  Mr.  Adams  wrote:  ''The  only  object  of  present  in- 
terest lor  which  :ill  iliese  settlements  on  the  northwest  coast  have 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  163 

been  made,  whether  by  Russians,  English  or  Americans,  has  been 
to  traffic  with  the  natives  for  furs  and  for  the  China  market. 

"This  trade  has,  in  point  of  fact,  not  only  been  enjoyed  by  the 
citizens  of  the  United  States,  but  has  been  prosecuted  by  them  to 
a  greater  extent  than  by  all  the  others  together. 

"It  has  been  combined  with  a  trade  in  sandal  wood  from  the 
Sandwich  Islands  to  China;  and  during  the  long  wars  in  which 
Europe  was  involved,  from  1790  to  1815,  it  was  left  aln?ost  entirely 
to  them. 

"In  1818  a  Russian  settlement  was  made  at  Atook  one  of  the 
Sandwich  Islands,  and  another  near  the  coast  of  California,  within 
a  few  leagues  of  San  Francisco,  the  most  northern  Spanish  settle- 
ment. * 

"If  the  motive  of  these  establishments  was  to  lay  the  foundation 
for  an  exclusive  territorial  claim  of  Russia  to  the  northwest  coast, 
down  to  the  very  borders  of  California,  and  founded  thereon  to 
assert  exclusive  rights  of  trading  with  the  natives  of  the  north- 
west coast,  and  to  navigation  and  fishery  in  the  Pacifip  Ocean,  it 
is  time  for  the  nations  whose  rights  and  interests  are, affected  by 
this  project  effectually  to  interpose. 

"There  can  perhaps  be  no  better  time  for  sayings'^frankly  and 
explicitly  to  the  Russian  Government  that  the  futureyfeeace  of  the 
world,  and  the  interest  of  Russia  herself,  cannot  be  promoted  by 
Russian  settlements  upon  any  part  of  the  American  continent. 

"With  the  exception  of  the  British  establishments  *^orth  of  the 
United  States  the  remainder  of  both  the  American  continents  must 
henceforth  be  left  in  the  management  of  American  ha^ds.  It  can- 
not possibly  be  the  purpose  of  Russia  to  form  extensive  colonial 
establishments  in  America.  ^' 

"The  new  American  republics  will  be  as  impatient  m  a  Russian 
neighbor  as  the  United  States." 

Of  this  Doc.  384,  Papers  V.,  and  Nos.  11  and  12,  pp.5ic9471,  are 
about  negotiations  with  Great  Britain  resulting  from'^he  negotia- 
tions with  Russia.  No.  11  is  a  letter  of  Richard  Rush  .to  J.  Q. 
Adams,  Secretary  of  State,  dated  London,  December'^9,  1823,  in 
which  he  reports  a  conversation  with  Mr.  Canning,']^  which  he 
had  told  Mr.  Canning  that  "the  United  States  were  willing  to  stipu- 
late to  make  no  settlements  north  of  the  olst  degree  of  north  lati- 
tude on  that  coast,  provided  Great  Britain  stipulated  to  make  none 
south  of  the  51st  degree  or  north  of  55  degrees,  and  Russia  to  make 
none  south  of  55  degrees  ...  we  were  willing  to  forbear  all 
settlements  north  of  51  degrees,  as  that  limit  might  be  sufficient  to 
give  us  the  benefit  of  all  the  waters  of  the  Columbia  River." 

Doc.  396,  pp.  510-582,  contains  the  "Correspondence  with  Great 
Britain  on  the  Various  Topics  of  Discussion  between  the  United 


1(U  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

States  and  Great  Britain  (in  1823-24),  commnnicated  to  the  Senate 
January  20,  1825." 

The  sixth  of  these  topics  was  "The  North  West  Coast  of  Amer- 
ica." 

For  some  reason  J.  Q.  Adams'  letter  of  instructions  to  Richard 
Rush,  of  July  22,  1823,  was  not  printed  with  the  other  papers 
in  Doc.  390,  but  January  31,  1820,  (Adams  having  become  I'resi- 
deut)  in  response  to  a  resolution  of  the  House,  he  sent  a  brief  mes- 
sage enclosing  this  letter,  and  it  appears  as  Doc.  417,  of  \'ol.  V., 
pp.  790-793. 

It  is  especially  interesting  and  valuable  for  its  statement  of 
the  Monroe  Doctrine,  because  if  any  man  ever  knew  exactly  the 
grounds  on  which  we  claimed  "the  Columbia  River  country"  (for 
it  was  not  yet  called  Oregon)  it  was  J.  Q.  Adams,  and  he  in  this 
letter  stated  those  grounds  with  great  precision,  as  follows  (p. 
791)  (after  reciting  the  restoration  of  Astoria,  on  October  G,  1818)  : 
"The  right  of  the  United  States  to  the  Columbia  River,  and  to  the 
interior  territory  washed  by  its  waters,  rests  upon  its  discovery 
from  the  sea  and  nomination  by  a  citizen  of  the  United  States, 
up(m  its  exploration  to  the  sea  by  Capts.  Lewis  and  Clark;  upon 
the  settlement  of  Astoria  made  under  the  protection  of  the  United 
States  and  thus  restored  to  them  in  1818,  and  upon  the  subsequent 
acquisition  of  all  the  rights  of  Spain,  the  only  European  power 
which  prior  to  the  discovery  of  the  river  had  any  pretensions  to 
territorial  rights  on  the  northwest  coast  of  America." 

(P.  792)  .  .  .  "It  is  not  imaginable  that  in  the  present 
condition  of  the  world  any  European  nation  should  entertain  the 
project  of  settling  a  colony  on  the  northwest  coast  of  America; 
that  the  United  States  should  form  establishments  there  with  views 
of  absolute  territorial  rights  and  inland  communication  is  not  only 
to  be  expected,  but  is  pointed  out  by  the  finger  of  nature,  and  has 
been  for  years  a  subject  of  serious  deliberation  in  Congress. 

"A  j)lan  has  for  several  sessions  been  before  them  for  estab- 
lishing a  territorial  government  on  the  borders  of  the  Columbia 
River. 

"It  will  undoubtedl}'  be  resumed  at  their  next  session,  and 
even  if  then  again  postponed,  there  cannot  be  a  doubt  that,  in  the 
course  of  a.  very  few  years,  it  must  be  carried  into  effect.  As  yet, 
however,  the  only  useful  purpose  to  which  the  northwest  coast  of 
America  has  been  or  can  be  made  subservient  to  the  settlements 
of  civilized  men  are  the  fisheries  on  its  adjoining  seas  and  trade 
with  the  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  the  country.  These  have  hith- 
erto been  enjoyed  in  conimon  by  the  people  of  the  United  States 
and  by  the  British  and  Russian  nations. 

"The  Spanish,  Portugese  and  French  nations  have  also  parti- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  165 

cipated  in  them  hitherto,  without  other  annoyance  than  that  which 
resulted  from  the  exclusive  territorial  claims  of  Spain  so  long  as 
they  were  insisted  on  by  her.     .     .     . 

''Previous  to  the  restoration  of  the  settlement  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Columbia  River  in  1818,  and  again  upon  the  first  introduction 
in  Congress  of  the  plan  for  constituting  a  territorial  government 
there,  some  disposition  was  manifested  by  Sir  Charles  Bagot  and 
Mr.  Canning  to  dispute  the  right  of  the  United  States  to  that  es- 
tablishment; and  some  vague  intimation  was  given  of  British 
claims  on  the  northwest  coast.  The  restoration  of  the  place  and 
the  convention  of  1818  were  considered  as  a  final  disposal  of  Mr. 
Bagot's  objections,  and  Mr.  Canning  declined  committing  to  paper 
those  which  he  had  intimated  in  conversation."  ...  "A  neces- 
sary consequence  of  this  state  of  things  will  be  that  the  American 
continents,  henceforth,  will  no  longer  be  subject  to  colonization. 

''Occupied  by  civilized  independent  nations,  they  will  be  access- 
ible to  Europeans,  and  to  each  other,  on  that  footing  alone,  and 
the  Pacific  Ocean,  in  every  part  of  it,  will  remain  open  to  the  navi- 
gation of  all  nations  in  like  manner  with  the  Atlantic 

(P.  793)  "Mr.  Middleton  is  authorized  by  his  instructions  to 
propose  an  article  of  similar  import"  (f.  e.,  to  the  3d  Article  of  the 
convention  of  October  20,  1818,  for  Joint  Occupancy  of  Oregon) 
"to  be  inserted  in  a  joint  convention  between  the  United  States, 
Great  Britain  and  Russia  for  a  term  of  ten  years  from  its  signa- 
ture. You  are  authorized  to  make  the  same  proposal  to  the  British 
Government,  and  with  a  view  to  draw  a  definite  line  of  demarca- 
tion for  the  future,  to  stipulate  that  no  settlement  shall  hereafter 
be  made  on  the  northwest  coast,  or  on  any  of  the  islands  thereto 
adjoining,  by  Russian  subjects,  south  of  latitude  55  degrees;  by 
citizens  of  the  United  States,  north  of  latitude  51  degrees,  or  by 
British  subjects  either  south  of  51  degrees  or  north  of  55  degrees. 
I  mention  the  latitude  of  51  degrees  as  the  bound  within  which  we 
are  willing  to  limit  the  future  settlement  of  the  United  States,  be- 
cause it  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  the  Columbia  River  branches  as 
far  north  as  51  degrees,  although  it  is  most  probably  not  the  Ta- 
coutche  Tesse  of  Mackenzie.  As,  however,  the  line  already  runs 
in  latitude  49  degrees  to  the  Stony  Mountains,  should  it  be  earn- 
estly insisted  upon  by  Great  Britain,  we  will  consent  to  carry  it  in 
continuance  on  the  same  parallel  to  the  sea." 

Returning  now  to  Doc.  396,  we  find  Rush's  statement  respect- 
ing the  negotiations  on  pp.  553-558.  On  p.  556  he  says  the  British 
plenipotentiaries  complained  of  Gen.  Jesup's  letter  in  a  report  of 
a  select  committee  of  the  House  of  Representatives  "adopted  in 
April  last,"  and  he  goes  on :  "Yet  I  was  bound  unequivocally  to 
reassert,  and  so  I  requested  the  British    plenipotentiaries  would 


166  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

consider  me  as  doiiif::,  the  full  and  exclusive  sovereignty  of  the 
United  States  over  the  whole  of  the  territory  beyond  the  Rocky 
Mountains  washed  by  the  river  Columbia,  in  manner  and  extent 
as  I  had  stated,  subject,  of  course,  to  whatever  conventional  ar- 
rangements they  may  ha\'e  formed  with  regard  to  it  with  other 
powers.  Their  title  to  this  whole  country  they  considered  as  not 
to  be  shaken.  It  had  often  been  proclaimed  in  the  legislative  dis- 
cussions of  the  nation  and  was  otherwise  public  before  the  world." 

At  the  12th  Conference,  April  2,  1824,  Rush  proposed  to  con- 
tinue the  Convention  of  1818  for  ten  years  more,  but  with  stipu- 
lation that  during  that  term  no  settlement  should  be  made  by  citi- 
zens of  the  Cnited  States  north  of  the  51st  degree  or  by  British 
subjects  south  of  the  alst  or  north  of  the  5oth  degree,  on  either  the 
main  land  or  any  of  the  islands  thereunto  adjoining. 

At  the  20th  Conference,  June  29,  1824,  the  British  plenipoten- 
tiaries offered  41)  degrees  to  the  most  northeastern  branch  of  the 
Columbia,  and  thence  down  the  middle  of  that  stream  to  the 
Pacific. 

''The  American  plenipotentiary  in  remarking  upon  this  bound- 
ary declared  his  utter  inability  to  accede  to  it;  but  finding  that 
the  line  offered  in  his  former  proposal  was  considered  wholly  in- 
admissible by  the  British  plenipotentiaries,  said  that,  in  the  hope 
of  adjusting  the  question,  he  would  so  far  vary  his  former  line  to 
the  south  as  to  consent  that  it  should  be  the  49th  instead  of  the 
51st  degree  of  north  latitude." 

The  British  negotiators  being  unwilling  to  accept  this  last  offer 
of  Rush,  the  negotiations  of  1823-24  with  Great  Britain  terminated, 
with  no  extension  of  our  northern  boundary  west  of  the  Stony 
Mountains,  but  with  these  two  important  gains  for  us,  that  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  had  been  announced  and  that  Great  Britain,  by 
the  offering  of  49  degrees  from  the  Stony  Mountains  to  the  north- 
eastern branch  of  the  Columbia  and  thence  down  the  middle  of  the 
stream  to  the  ocean,  had  finally  relinquished  all  claim  to  the  terri- 
tory south  and  east  of  that  stream,  and  so  left  in  dispute,  after 
1824,  only  about  58,000  square  miles,  being  that  part  of  the  present 
State  of  Washington  north  and  west  of  the  Columbia,  and  compris- 
ing a  little  less  than  one-third  of  the  "Columbia  River  country"  or 
the  Old  Oregon  territory  south  of  49  degrees. 

There  is  the  most  abundant  evidence  in  later  negotiations  and 
in  the  debates  in  (.'ongress  that  this  was  the  general  understand- 
ing of  the  statesmen  of  both  nations,  as  will  appear  hereinafter  by 
abundant  citation  of  authorities. 

So  certain  were  the  British  of  this  that,  as  appears  in  the  ''Copy 
of  a  Docuiiiont  Found  Among  the  Papers  of  the  Late  Dr.  John 
McLoughlin"    (published  in  Tr.  Oregon  Pioneer  Association,  1880, 


ACQUISITION^    OF    OREGON  167 

and  quoted  herein  in  full  in  Chapter  VII.),  "The  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  officially  informed  him  in  1825  that  in  no  event  could  the  Brit- 
ish claim  extend  south  of  the  Columbia,  and  that  he  so  informed 
the  few  Canadian  employes  of  the  company,  who  on  finishing  their 
term  of  service  wished  to  settle  in  the  Willamette  Valley,  instead 
of  being  returned  to  Canada,  as  provided  by  their  contracts  with 
the  company." 

Am.  State  Papers,  For.  Eel.,  Vol.  V.,  pp.  245-250,  contains  Presi- 
dent Monroe's  Message  to  the  18th  Congress  at  its  1st  session,  date 
December  2,  1823,  in  which  (on  p.  246),  after  stating  that,  at  the 
request  of  the  Russian  Emperor,  our  Minister  to  St.  Petersburg 
and  the  British  Minister  there  have  been  empowered  to  arrange  an 
amicable  settlement  of  the  respective  rights  and  interests  of  Rus- 
sia and  the  United  States  and  Russia  and  England  on  the  north- 
west coast  of  America,  the  whole  of  the  famous  Monroe  Doctrine 
^as  stated  to  all  the  world,  its  non-colonization  part  being  as  fol- 
lows: "In  the  discussions  to  which  this  interest  (/.  e.,  the  title  to 
the  Oregon  Territory)  has  given  rise,  and  in  the  arrangements  by 
which  they  may  terminate,  the  occasion  has  been  judged  proper  for 
asserting  as  a  principle  in  which  the  rights  and  interests  of  the 
United  States  are  involved,  that  the  American  Continents,  by  the 
free  and  independent  condition  which  they  have  assumed  and  main- 
tain, are  henceforth  not  to  be  considered  as  subjects  for  future  col- 
onization by  any  European  power." 

At  the  first  session  of  the  19th  Congress  a  select  committee  was 
appointed  on  "so  much  of  the  President's  message  as  respects  the 
establishment  of  a  military  post  at  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia 
River  and  the  more  perfect  exploring  of  the  northwest  coast  of 
America,"  of  which  Baylies  of  Massachusetts  w^as  chairman,  and 
it  made  two  unanimous  reports,  commonly  known  as  Baylies  first 
and  second  reports.  The  first  (No.  35,  Vol.  L,  Repts.  of  Coms.  H.  of 
R.,  1st  Sess.,  19th  Cong.,  p.  26)  was  made  January  16,  1826. 

The  second  (No.  213,  Repts.  of  Coms.  H.  of  R.,  19th  Cong.,  1st 
Sess.,  Vol.  II.,  p.  22)  was  made  May  15,  1826.  These  reports  were 
repeatedly  referred  to  and  quoted  not  only  by  Representatives  and 
Senators  in  debates  in  later  years  from  1828  to  1843,  but  also  in 
other  committee  reports  to  both  houses  of  Congress,  and  in  news- 
paper and  magazine  articles. 

Those  who  still  labor  under  the  delusion  that  our  National  Gov- 
ernment and  the  people  of  the  country  were  ignorant  of  the  fertility 
of  the  soil,  the  geniality  and  healthfulness  of  the  climate,  and  the 
great  resources  in  timber  and  fish  of  the  Columbia  River  country, 
till  the  missionaries  furnished  information  on  those  points  in  their 
letters  (the  first  of  which  were  not  received  in  the  States  till 
1835),  and  that  as  late  as  March,  1843,  the  Government  and  the 


1G8  ACQrrsrTrox  of  oregox 

Nation  in  general  were  ignorant  about  Oregon  and  indifferent  to 
its  acquisition  till  Whitman  informed  them  about  it,  are  respect- 
fully invited  to  peruse  the  following  extracts  from  these  two  unani- 
mous reports,  unanimously  adopted  by  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives in  Januai-y  and  May,  182G,  more  than  ten  years  before  Whit- 
man and  Spalding  established  their  mission,  and  more  than  eight 
years  before  the  ^Methodist  Mission  was  established.  (Kept.  No. 
35)  After  describing  in  very  favorable  terms  the  country  between 
the  Cascade  Mountains  and  the  Pacific,  it  speaks  thus  (on  pp.  3 
and  4)  of  the  region  between  the  Cascade  Mountains  and  the  Rocky 
Mountains — the  very  region  in  which  the  Whitman-Spalding-Eells 
mission  stations  were  established  in  1836-38: 

"Beyond  and  between  this  chain  and  the  Rocky  Mountains  the 
country  for  several  hundred  miles  in  length,  and  about  fifty  wide, 
is  described  by  Lewis  and  Clark  as  a  high,  level  plain,  in  all  its 
parts  extremely  fertile.  'Nearly  the  whole  of  this  widespread  tract' 
(say  they)  'is  covered  with  a  profusion  of  grass  and  plants,  which 
were  at  this  time'  (May  IG)  'as  high  as  the  knee.  Amongst  them 
are  a  variety  of  esculent  plants  and  roots,  acquired'  (p.  4)  'with- 
out much  difficulty,  and  yielding  not  only  a  nutritious,  but  a  very 
agreeable  food.  The  air  is  pure  and  dry,  the  climate  quite  as  mild 
if  not  milder  than  the  same  parallels  of  latitude  in  the  Atlantic 
States,  and  must  be  equally  healthy.  In  short,  this  district  affords 
many  advantages  to  settlers,  and  if  properly  cultivated  would  yield 
every  object  necessary  for  the  subsistence  and  comfort  of  civilized 
man.     .     .     .' 

"(P.  16)  As  to  subsistence,  the  great  variety  and  abundance 
of  game,  both  beasts  and  birds,  and  the  prodigious  quantities  of  the 
finest  and  most  nutritious  species  of  fish  that  throng  the  waters  of 
this  noble  river,  can  leave  no  doubt  on  that  subject,  even  if  sup- 
plies from  home  were  wholly  withheld.  We  learn  from  Lewis  and 
Clark  that  the  multitudes  of  salmon  in  the  Oregon  are  inconceiv- 
able, and  they  ascend  to  its  remotest  sources,  to  the  very  ridge  of 
the  dividing  mountains.     .     . 

"(P.  20)  The  great  but  undeveloped  capacities  of  this  region 
on  the  northwest  coast  for  trade  must  be  obvious  to  every  one  who 
inspects  its  map. 

''A  vast  river,  with  its  tributaries  and  branches,  waters  its 
whole  extent  through  seven  degrees  of  latitude,  and  even  penetrates 
beyond  into  the  territories  of  other  nations. 

"It  abounds  in  excellent  timber,  and  in  spars  equal  to  those  of 
New  Zealand,  unsurj)assed  by  any  in  the  world.  Its  waters  are 
navigable  for  vessels  through  half  its  extent,  and  for  boats  (saving 
a  few  short  portages)  through  half  the  remainder. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  169 

''The  water  power  for  moving  manufacturing  machinery  is  un- 
equaled  and  commences  where  the  navigation  terminates. 

''It  is  bounded  on  the  south  by  a  country  which  abounds  in 
cattle  and  wheat,  the  two  great  sources  of  subsistence  for  a  new 
colony,  and  which  can  be  reached  by  sea  in  less  than  ten  days.     .     . 

"On  one  side  it  approaches  a  country  where  coal  in  prodigious 
quantities  has  already  been  discovered,  and,  on  the  other,  the  bor- 
ders of  a  sea,  which,  for  a  space  of  76  degrees,  is  seldom  ruffled  by 
a  storm,  and  which,  in  all  probability,  can  be  traversed  in  every 
direction  by  steamboats. 

''These  advantages,  great  as  they  now  are,  will  be  trifling  in 
comparison  to  what  they  will  be  whenever  a  water  communication 
between  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  Oceans,  through  the  isthmus  di- 
viding North  and  South  America  shall  have  been  efliected.  Of  the 
practicability  of  this  communication  there  is  no  doubt.  If  Hum- 
boldt is  to  be  believed  the  expense  at  one  place  would  not  exceed 
that  of  the  Delaware  and  Chesapeake  canal.  Should  it  be  done,  a 
revolution  in  commerce  will  be  effected,  greater  than  any  since  the 
discovery  of  America;  by  which  both  the  power  and  the  objects  of 
its  action  will  be  more  than  doubled.  The  Indian  commerce  of 
Europe  will  pass  through  the  Americas,  and  more  commercial 
wealth  will  be  borne  upon  the  ample  bosom  of  the  Pacific  than  ever 
was  wafted  over  the  waves  of  the  Atlantic  in  the  proudest  days  of 
the  commercial  greatness  of  Spain,  Portugal,  France,  Holland  and 
England. 

"If  it  were  given  to  a  civilized,  commercial  and  manufacturing 
people  where  to  choose  their  place  of  rest,  the  world  affords  no  po- 
sition equal  to  this,  and  it  requires  no  prophetic  spirit  to  foresee 
the  wealth  and  grandeur  of  that  fortunate  race  whose  happy  des- 
tiny shall  have  placed  their  ancestors  in  this  beautiful  region." 

(Kept.  No,  213)  On  p.  2  they  describe  the  remarkable  journey 
of  Samuel  Adams  Ruddock,  who,  in  1821,  with  a  party  of  fur 
traders  went  from  the  Missouri  frontier  up  the  Platte  some  200 
miles,  thence  southwest  to  Santa  Fe,  New  Mexico,  thence  north- 
west to  the  head  of  the  Willamette  (or  Multnomah)  River,  and 
down  the  Columbia,  reaching  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  August  1, 
1821,  seventy-nine  days  after  leaving  the  Missouri  River  at  Council 
Bluffs. 

After  describing  (on  p.  10)  the  founding  of  Astoria  (on  p.  13) 
the  report  says:  ''The  American  title  is  founded  on  occupation, 
strengthened  (as  the  committee  believe)  by  purchase,  by  prior  dis- 
covery of  the  river,  and  its  exploration  from  some  of  its  sources 
in  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Ocean.  Great  Britain  can  have  no 
title  so  strong  as  this.  This  occupation,  it  is  true,  was  not  author- 
ized originally  by  the  Government  of  the  United  States,  but  they 


170  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

subsequently  sanctioned  it  by  demanding?  and  reeeivinjij  the  sur- 
render of  the  Fort;  and  the  ])Osts  of  the  Tnited  Northwest  and 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  for  all  national  and  legal  purposes,  are  now, 
and  have  been  for  several  years,  in  the  possession  of  the  Ignited 
States." 

(P.  20)  ''After  a  careful  examination  of  the  British  claim,  the 
committee  have  unanimously  come  to  the  conclusion  that  it  is 
wholly  unfounded,  and  that  the  navigators  of  Great  Britain  were 
not  the  original  discoverers  of  any  part  of  the  region  which  is  in- 
cluded between  the  Mexican  and  Kussian  boundaries.  Neverthe- 
less, the  minute  examination  which  has  been  made  by  them  of 
parts  of  this  coast  ought,  perhaps,  to  secure  to  the  nation  who  pa- 
tronized them  something  more  than  could  be  claimed  as  a  positive 
right;  but  we  think  the  offer  of  Mr.  Kush  to  continue  the  bound- 
ary along  the  49th  parallel  of  latitude  from  the  Kocky  Mountains 
to  the  ocean  was  as  great  a  concession  as  would  be  compatible  with 
our  interests,  our  honor,  or  our  rights." 

Then  discussing  for  something  more  than  a  page  Great  Britain's 
policy  of  world-wide  dominion,  the  report  continues  (p.  21)  as  fol- 
lows: ''What  then  remains  to  enable  her  to  encompass  the  globe? 
Columbia  River  and  De  Fuca's  Strait.  Possessed  of  these  she  will 
soon  plant  her  standards  on  every  island  in  the  Pacific.  Except 
the  Columbia  there  is  no  river  which  opens  far  into  the  interior 
on  the  whole  western  shore  of  the  Pacific  Ocean.  There  is  no  se- 
cure port  or  naval  station  from  39  degrees  to  4G  degrees.  The  pos- 
session of  these  waters  will  give  her  command  of  the  North  Pacific, 
enable  her  to  control  the  commerce  and  policy  of  Mexico,  Central 
America  and  South  America. 

''These  rich  nations  will  be  her  commercial  colonies. 

"She  will  then  gather  to  herself  all  nations  and  her  ambition 
will  span  the  earth.  The  committee  entertain  no  disposition  to 
risk  controversy  with  Great  Britain  on  a  question  of  doubtful 
right;  neither  have  they  any  disposition,  in  defense  of  an  incon- 
testable right,  to  avoid  it." 

In  the  2d  session  of  the  19th  Congress  no  action  was  taken  on 
the  Columbia  River  country,  because  the  negotiations  with  Great 
Britain  which  resulted  in  the  treaty  of  August  0,  1827,  were  then 
in  ])rogress.  The  correspondence  relating  to  these  negotiations  is 
in  Ex.  Doc,  H.  of  R.,  Vol.  V.,  20th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  Doc.  No.  199, 
and  also  in  Am.  State  Papers,  For.  Rel.,  Vol.  VI.,  Doc.  No.  458.  I 
quote  from  Doc.  458. 

It  began  with  a  letter  from  George  Canning  of  the  British  For- 
eign Office  to  Rufus  King,  then  our  Minister  to  England,  dated 
April  20,  1820,  announcing  the  desire  of  Great  Britain  to  reopen 
negotiations  on  the  title  to  the  northwest  coast  of  America,  and 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  171 

ended  August  7,  1827,  with  a  letter  from  Albert  Gallatin  to  Henry 
Clay,  Secretary  of  State. 

Remembering  not  only  the  very  brilliant  intellect  and  the  in- 
tense Americanism  of  each  of  the  three  men  who  conducted  all  of 
this  negotiation,  John  Quincy  Adams,  as  President,  Henry  Clay,  as 
Secretary  of  State,  and  Albert  Gallatin  (who  had  been  associated 
with  Rush  in  the  negotiations  of  1818,  and  who  was  sent,  as  En- 
voy Extraordinary  and  Minister  Plenipotentiary  to  England,  on 
purpose  to  carry  on  this  negotiation  in  London),  but  also  that  they 
were  the  leading  three  of  the  five  men  who  negotiated  for  us  the 
Treaty  of  Ghent,  and  by  the  word  "possessions"  in  its  first  article 
secured  to  us  the  restoration  of  Astoria,  it  goes  without  saying 
that  all  our  interests  would  be  carefully  safeguarded,  and  that  the 
negotiations  would  show  a  full  acquaintance  with  every  phase  of 
the  subject. 

The  outcome  of  these  negotiations  was  the  convention  signed 
August  6,  1827,  which  in  its  first  article  continued  in  force  indefi- 
nitely the  3d  Article  of  the  Convention  of  October  20,  1818,  making 
the  territory  and  waters  claimed  by  both  the  United  States  and 
Great  Britain  westward  of  the  Stony  Mountains  "free  and  open  to 
the  vessels,  citizens  and  subjects  of  the  two  powers ;"  but  in  its  2d 
Article  provided  that  either  party  might  after  October  20,  1828,  at 
any  time  terminate  the  treaty  by  giving  the  other  party  twelve 
months'  notice;  and  its  3d  Article  provided  that  "nothing  con- 
tained in  this  convention,  or  in  the  3d  Article  of  the  convention  of 
the  20th  of  October,  1818,  hereby  continued  in  force,  shall  be  con- 
strued to  impair,  or  in  any  manner  affect,  the  claims  which  either 
of  the  contracting  parties  may  have  to  any  part  of  the  country 
westward  of  the  Stony  or  Rocky  Mountains." 

The  significant  change  in  this  third  article  is  that  the  reserva- 
tion of  "the  claims  of  any  other  power  or  state,"  which  was  in- 
serted in  the  3d  Article  of  the  Convention  of  1818,  was  omitted,  as 
we  had  bought  the  Spanish  claim  in  February,  1819,  and  limited 
the  Russian  claims  at  54  deg.  and  40  min.  by  the  treaty  of  April 
5-17,  1824. 

The  following  extracts  from  the  correspondence  show  how  thor- 
oughly our  negotiators  understood  the  value  of  the  Oregon  Terri- 
tory to  us,  and  how  carefully  they  guarded  our  interests,  and  with 
what  unswerving  tenacity  they  adhered  to  the  line  of  49  degrees  as 
the  utmost  we  would  concede  to  Great  Britain.  Three  times  with- 
in less  than  two  months  Gallatin  was  instructed  by  the  President 
that  49  degrees  from  the  Stony  Mountains  to  the  Pacific  Ocean 
was  our  "ultimatum,"  that  precise  word  being  used  in  one  case,  and 
expressions  equivalent  to  it  the  other  two  times,  as  follows:  H. 
Clay,  Secretary  of  State,  on  June  19,  1826,  wrote  a  letter  of  in- 


172  ACQUISTTIOX    OF    ORECOX 

structious  to  A.  Gallatin,  in  which,  after  declaring  that  "it  is  not 
thought  necessary  to  add  much  to  the  argument  advanced  on  this 
point  in  the  instructions  given  to  Mr.  Rush"  (/.  e.,  in  1823)  "(a 
copy  of  which  is  herewith  coiiiinunicated ) .  and  that  which  was  em- 
ployed by  him  in  the  course  of  his  negotiation  to  support  our  title 
as  derived  from  prior  discovery  and  settlement  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Columbia,  and  from  the  treaty  with  Spain  concluded  on  the  22d  of 
February,  1810,  he  said: 

"That  argument  is  believed  to  have  conclusively  established 
our  title  on  both  grounds.  Nor  is  it  conceived  that  Great  Britain 
has  or  can  make  out  even  a  colorable  title  to  any  portion  of  the 
Northwest  Coast.  .  .  You  are  then  authorized  to  propose  the 
annulment  of  the  third  article  of  the  Convention  of  1818,  and  the 
extension  of  the  line  on  the  parallel  of  49  degrees  from  the  eastern 
side  of  the  Stony  Mountains,  where  it  now  terminates,  to  the  Pa- 
cific Ocean,  as  the  permanent  boundary  between  the  territories  of 
the  two  powers  in  that  quarter.  This  is  our  ultimatum,  and  you 
may  announce  it.  We  can  consent  to  no  other  line  more  favorable 
to  Great  Britain." 

Only  four  days  later,  June  23,  1826,  Clay  again  wrote  to  Gal- 
latin as  follows:  ''Mr.  Crook's  information  adds  little  to  what  was 
previously  possessed.  If  the  land  on  the  Northwest  Coast  between 
the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  and  the  parallel  of  49  degrees  be  bad, 
and  therefore  we  should  lose  but  little  in  relinquishing  it,  the  same 
consideration  will  apply  to  the  British.  The  President  cannot  con- 
sent to  vary  the  line  proposed  in  your  instructions." 

August  9,  1820,  Mr,  Clay  again  wTote  to  Mr.  Gallatin  as  fol- 
lows :  ''The  President  cannot  consent  that  the  boundary  between 
the  territories  of  the  two  powers  on  the  Northwest  Coast  should 
be  south  of  49  degrees. 

"The  British  Government  has  not  been  committed  by  a  positive 
rejection  of  a  line  on  the  i)arallel  of  49  degrees;  but  if  it  had  been 
its  pride  may  take  refuge  in  the  offer  which  for  the  first  time  you 
are  to  propose  of  a  right  in  common  with  us  to  the  navigation  of 
the  Columbia  River." 

Although  this  "ultimatum"  letter  of  Clay  seemed  so  important 
to  Congress  that,  as  we  shall  see  later,  the  Senate  and  the  House 
of  Representatives  by  unanimous  votes  ordered  it  printed  in  25,000 
copies  of  four  reports  in  1838,  1839,  1842,  and  January,  1843,  no 
advocate  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  tale  has  ever  even  alluded 
to  the  letter,  nor  to  anything  else  of  vital  significance  in  this  great 
negotiation  as  showing  how  thoroughly  every  phase  of  the  subject 
was  discussed,  and  how  inflexibly  Adams,  Clay  and  Gallatin  stood 
for  our  rights  to  the  Oregon  Territory  south  of  49  degrees. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  173 

The  following  extracts  from  Gallatin's  letters  to  Clay  are  so 
very  significant  of  the  real  position  of  the  parties  that  it  seems  to 
me  essential  that  they  should  be  quoted,  and  I  only  regret  that 
space  will  not  permit  quoting  much  more  from  them. 

Under  date  of  London,  November  16,  1826:  "Mr.  Huskisson, 
amongst  the  reasons  for  taking  up  that  subject"  (i  e.,  the  north- 
west boundary),  "first  mentioned  that  it  had  for  several  sessions 
occupied  the  attention  of  Congress,  and  that  it  was  not  possible  to 
foresee  the  effect  which  the  measures  they  might  adopt  would  have 
on  the  question  and  on  the  friendly  relations  of  the  two  countries. 
In  a  subsequent  part  of  the  conversation  he  said  that  the  joint 
occupancy  would  cease  in  1828  unless  renewed;  and  that  the  re- 
moval of  any  settlement  made  by  British  subjects  would  be  con- 
sidered as  an  act  of  aggression. 

"This  having  been  already  intimated  in  the  course  of  the  nego- 
tiations of  1824,  I  asked  whether  he  would  consider  as  an  aggres- 
sion the  removal  of  such  British  subjects  from  Astoria,  or  such 
other  of  our  settlements  as  were  directed  to  be  restored  by  the 
Treaty  of  Ghent. 

"To  which  it  was  answered  that  these  were  considered  as  in 
our  possession.  Mr.  Addington  added  that  the  British  had  removed 
from  Astoria  to  the  opposite  side  of  the  river,  where  I  understood 
they  had  now  a  fort  called  Vancouver. 

"Protocol  of  seventh  Conference  of  the  British  and  American 
plenipotentiaries  held  December  19,  1826. 

"Present  Mr.  Gallatin  and  Mr.  Addington." 

In  the  course  of  his  argument  Mr.  Gallatin  said:  "If  the  pres- 
ent state  of  occupancy  is  urged  on  the  part  of  Great  Britain,  the 
probability  of  the  manner  in  which  the  territory  west  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains  must  be  settled  belongs  essentially  to  the  subject. 

"Under  whatever  nominal  sovereignty  that  country  may  be 
placed,  and  whatever  its  ultimate  destinies  may  be,  it  is  nearly 
reduced  to  a  certainty  that  it  will  be  almost  exclusively  peopled 
by  the  surplus  population  of  the  United  States. 

"The  distance  from  Great  Britain  and  the  expense  incident  to 
emigration  forbid  the  expectation  of  any  being  practicable  from 
that  quarter  but  on  a  comparatively  small  scale." 

Under  date  of  London,  December  22,  1826:  "Mr.  Huskisson,  in 
the  course  of  the  discussion,  several  times  repeated  that  there  was 
no  intention  on  the  part  of  Great  Britain  to  colonize  the  country. 
They  have  certainly  no  other  immediate  object  than  that  of  pro- 
tecting the  North  West  Co.  in  her  fur  trade. 

"In  every  other  respect  the  question  appeared  to  be  with  them 
rather  one  of  national  pride  than  anything  else.  Not  only  from 
them,  but  from  several  other  distinct  quarters,  it  is  certain  that 


174  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

that  jn-ide  was  sorely  wounded  by  that  part  of  the  late  President's 
message  which  declared  that  America  was  no  longer  open  to  Euro- 
pean colonization. 

''This  was  new  doctrine  and  was  considered  as  dictatorial,  and 
as  hinting,  too,  with  no  favorable  intentions  to  the  existing  British 
colonies.  Those  parts  of  the  second  report  of  a  committee  of  the 
House  of  Representatives  at  the  last  session  of  Congress,  (that  is 
Baylies'  second  rei)ort)  to  which  I  have  alluded  in  a  former  dis- 
patch, gave  great,  fresh  and  additional  offense,  awakening  anew 
the  feelings  which  had  been  excited  by  the  former  passage  in  the 
President's  message. 

"I  think  it  not  improbable  that  we  might  have  come  to  an  ar- 
rangement had  it  not  been  for  these  causes.  The  North  West  Com- 
pany is  also  very  inimical,  and  has  no  inconsiderable  weight." 

Under  date  of  June  27,  1827:  ''The  British  plenipotentiary  de- 
sired to  insert  in  the  protocol  a  declaration  that  neither  party 
should  establish  any  military  posts  in  the  Oregon  Territory.  'Great 
Britain,'  they  said,  'had  no  wish  to  establish  such  posts  and  would 
do  it  only  in  self  defense.'  .  ,  .  'There  was  no  intention  on  the 
part  of  Great  Britain  to  colonize  the  country,  or  to  impede  the 
progress  of  our  settlements.'  ...  'It  appeared  from  that  ex- 
position that  (h-eat  Britain  denied,  indeed,  their'  (i.  e.,  the  United 
States')  'exclusive  right  to  any  part  of  the  territory  in  question, 
but  made  no  exclusive  claim  herself,  and  considered  it  open  to  the 
first  occupant.' 

''Although  the  United  States  asserted  and  would  not  abandon 
her  exclusive  right,  yet,  in  fact,  the  country  must  necessarily  be- 
come ultimately  theirs,  even  according  to  the  British  doctrine.  In 
that  view  of  the  subject  all  that  the  United  States  declared  to  be 
hers,  viz.,  the  i)reservation  of  peace  until  (if  no  arrangement  should 
previously  take  place)  the  whole  country  was  occupied;  and  I  had 
myself  no  doubt  that  it  would  be  entirely  occupied  and  settled  by 
citizens  of  the  United  States." 

Under  date  of  July  10,  1827:  "Whatever  change  may  hereafter 
take  place  in  the  views  of  the  British  Government  concerning  that 
country,  I  may  with  confidence  say  that  there  is  not  at  present  any 
wish  to  colonize  it;  that  they  view  it  rather  with  indilference ;  that 
they  do  not  believe  that  it  will  when  once  settled  long  remain  either 
a  British  colony  or  a  part  of  the  United  States;  that  they  do  not 
think  it  therefore  a  matter  of  gi-eat  im])ortauce  whether  it  shall  re- 
ceive its  inhabitants  from  Great  Britain,  Canada  or  the  United 
States;  and  that  they  are  willing  to  let  the  settlement  of  the  coun- 
try take  its  natural  course." 

August  7,  1827:  "But  in  addition  to  the  reasons  whicli  were 
assigned  in  the  course  of  the  negotiation  in  favor  of  continuing  it" 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  175 

(i.  e.,  joint  occupancy)  ''in  force,  there  is  still  one  peculiar  to  the 
United  States.  They  claim  exclusive  sovereignty  over  a  territory  a 
considerable  portion  of  which  is  occupied  by  British  traders  whom 
they  could  not  dispossess  without  engaging  in  a  war,  and  whom 
from  their  distance  and  other  causes  they  are  not  at  this  time  pre- 
pared to  remove. 

"It  is  certainly  more  eligible  that  those  persons  should  remain 
on  the  territory  of  the  United  States  by  virtue  of  a  compact  and 
with  their  consent,  than  in  defiance  of  their  authority." 

After  stating  that  the  British  from  their  system  of  government 
could  govern  the  Oregon  country  in  its  then  condition  by  a  monop- 
olistic trading  company,  Gallatin  continues:  "But  in  order  to  at- 
tain the  same  ends  the  United  States  would  be  obliged  to  resort  to 
different  means.  The  establishment  of  an  exclusive  company  ap- 
peared incompatible  with  their  habits  and  institutions.  They 
could  not  govern  the  country  and  preserve  the  peace  through  that 
medium." 

Benton  bitterly  opposed  the  ratification  of  this  treaty  of  August 
6,  1827,  but  could  only  rally  against  it  six  other  Senators  (only 
one  of  whom,  Cobb  of  Georgia,  was  from  a  seaboard  State) — the 
vote  being  31  for  and  7  against,  with  no  record  of  the  opinions  of 
the  eight  Senators  who  did  not  vote. 

Fifteen  years  later  Benton  opposed  with  equally  bitter  invective 
the  ratification  of  the  Ashburton  treaty,  largely  because  it  had  not 
included  a  settlement  of  the  Oregon  question,  and  could  only  rally 
9  against  to  39  for  it,  with  no  record  of  the  opinions  of  the  two 
Senators  who  did  not  vote. 

The  injunction  of  secrecy  seems  not  to  have  been  removed  from 
the  discussion  of  the  1827  treaty,  but  in  Appendix  to  Congressional 
Globe,  3d  Sess.,  27th  Cong.,  pp.  1-26,  will  be  found  Benton's  speech 
(covering  76  columns)  against  the  Ashburton  Treaty,  delivered  in 
secret  session  of  the  Senate,  August  18,  1842;  the  injunction  of 
secrecy  having  been  removed. 

So  overwhelmingly  was  the  judgment  of  the  Senate  against 
Benton  on  both  of  these  treaties,  that  on  each  the  friends  of  rati- 
fication could  have  granted  leaves  of  absence  to  as  many  as  were 
required  to  ratify  and  then  have  had  remaining  three  more  than 
the  two-thirds  necessary  to  ratify ;  or,  in  other  words,  instead  of 
having  merely  twice  as  many  in  favor  of  ratifying  as  were  opposed 
to  it,  they  had  in  each  case  three  more  than  four  times  as  many 
as  voted  against  ratification. 

It  is  doubtful  if  any  other  politician  in  our  history  ever  suc- 
ceeded in  acquiring  so  widespread  a  reputation  as  a  chief  factor 
in  accomplishing  a  great  national  work,  upon  which  his  real  in- 
fluence was  never  decisive,  as  Benton  acquired  in  connection  with 


176  ACQUISITION    OF   OREGON 

the  Oregon  acquisition,  by  merely  writing  newspaper  articles  and 
incessantly  making  speeches  about  it,  though  of  the  real  construc- 
tion work  which  secured  us  Oregon  he  not  only  did  absolutely  noth- 
ing, but  bitterly  opposed  what  such  statesmen  as  Madison,  Monroe, 
J.  Q.  Adams,  Albert  Gallatin,  Kichard  Kush  and  Henry  Clay  did 
do,  which  secured  us  Oregon  without  war  and  without  expense. 

A  very  ambitious  young  lawyer,  already  well  experienced  in 
}>olitics,  Benton,  at  35,  migrated  in  1817  from  Tennessee  to  St. 
Louis,  in  the  then  Territory  of  Missouri,  which  it  was  certain  must 
soon  be  admitted  as  a  State. 

The  Convention  of  1818  about  "the  Columbia  River  country" 
had  been  ratified  unanimously  by  the  Senate,  but  St.  Louis  being 
then  the  headquarters  of  the  fur  trade,  Benton  was  astute  enough 
to  see  that  a  violent  opposition  to  that  convention,  on  the  ground 
that  "the  Columbia  River  country"  was  ours,  and  that  we  should 
never  have  made  a  convention  allowing  the  British  fur  traders  the 
same  rights  there  as  our  own  traders  had,  would  be  so  very  popu- 
lar as  to  land  him  in  the  position  he  coveted  of  Senator  from  Mis- 
souri ;  and  so  in  the  St.  Louis  Enquirer  he  attacked  it  with  utmost 
vehemence  of  language,  declaring  that  it  should  not  have  been 
made,  and  that  it  would  result  in  the  British  acquiring  the  Valley 
of  the  Columbia. 

That  in  the  judgment  of  all  our  statesmen  who  ever  negotiated 
on  the  Oregon  (juestion  that  treaty  was  the  best  that  could  then  be 
made,  that  its  renewal  in  1827  was  equally  wise,  that  the  omission 
of  Oregon  from  the  Ashburton  treaty  was  also  equally  wise,  and 
that  the  treaty  of  1818  and  its  renewal  in  1827  by  their  very  terms 
made  it  iin])Ossib]e  (in  the  opinion  of  such  men  as  Albert  Gallatin, 
George  Bancroft,  Edw.  Everett,  James  Buchanan,  John  C.  Calhoun, 
John  Quincy  Adams,  Andrew  Jackson,  Martin  Van  Buren  and 
many  other  of  our  ablest  statesmen)  that  Great  Britain  by  found- 
ing trading  posts  or  establishing  settlements  could,  while  those 
treaties  remained  in  force,  in  the  least  degree  strengthen  her  claims 
to  any  part  of  the  Columbia  River  country;  that  every  British, 
diplomat  who  negotiated  with  us  on  the  question,  from  Iluskisson 
and  Canning  in  1823  to  Pakenham  in  1844-46,  had  tacitly  endorsed 
the  correctness  of  this  i)osition  by  never  making  any  claim  that 
anything  done  by  Great  Britain  subsequent  to  October  2(1,  1818, 
had  in  any  way  afifected  the  title  to  any  part  of  the  region  in  dis- 
])ute;  and  that  Lord  Aberdeen  (head  of  the  British  Foreign  Office 
from  1841  till  after  the  treaty  of  1846  was  concluded)  explicitly 
assented  to  the  correctness  of  our  position  on  this  policy — all  this 
counted  for  naught  Avith  Benton. 

Nor  did  the  fact  that  Rush  and  Gallatin  both  pointed  out  that 
we  could  not  expect  to  remove  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  by  force  in 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  111 

1823,  nor  in  1827,  and  that  it  was  therefore  better  for  us  to  con- 
tinue the  joint  occupancy  condition  till  the  unequaled  and  majestic 
westward  movement  of  our  population  should  so  change  the  then 
existing  conditions  as  to  make  it  desirable  for  us  to  insist  on  imme- 
diately fixing  our  boundary  at  41)  degrees,  and  so  acquiring  the 
right  coincidently  with  the  development  of  the  unquestionable 
power  to  take  undisputed  control  of  the  Oregon  country,  in  the 
slightest  degree  atfect  Benton's  constant  clamor  for  immediately 
abrogating  the  treaty  and  taking  possession  of  the  country ;  and  in 
the  later  years  of  the  struggle  from  insisting  that  in  contemptuous 
disregard  of  our  own  freely  executed  treaty  obligations  we  should, 
by  granting  lands  to  settlers  and  assuming  full  control  of  Oregon, 
do  that  which  the  ''correspondence"  in  Doc.  458  shows  it  was  dis- 
tinctly agreed  by  both  parties  in  1826-27  should  not  be  done  by 
either,  without  first  giving  the  twelve  months'  notice  required  to 
abrogate  the  treaty. 

Benton  was  never  intrusted  with  any  share  in  conducting  any 
negotiations  about  Oregon,  nor  was  he  made  chairman  of  either  of 
the  special  committees  of  the  Senate  on  Oregon,  which  in  1838  and 
1842  made  extensive  and  very  valuable  reports  on  Oregon,  though 
as  chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Indian  Affairs  he  made  a  report 
on  the  fur  trade  in  February,  1829,  which,  like  Calhoun's  in  1818, 
was  chiefly  connected  with  Oregon  matters,  as,  indeed,  any  valu- 
able report  on  the  fur  trade  in  those  days  must  have  been. 

He  was  also  chairman  of  the  Military  Committee  of  the  Senate 
in  January,  1831,  when  it  reported  back  President  Jackson's  mes- 
sage enclosing  the  letters  of  Ashley,  Smith,  Sublette  and  Jackson, 
Major  Pilcher  and  Lewis  Cass  and  Gen.  William  Clark,  with  a 
recommendation  that  the  documents  be  printed  and  1,500  copies 
extra  be  furnished  for  the  use  of  the  Senate. 

But  when  all  proper  deductions  have  been  made  from  the 
greatly  exaggerated  reputation  of  Benton  as  a  chief  factor  in  se- 
curing Oregon,  these  indisputable  facts  remain :  That  he  was  al- 
ways, after  1818  (three  years  before  the  commencement  of  his  term 
as  United  States  Senator  from  Missouri),  an  extremely  ardent  if 
sometimes  not  a  specially  wise  friend  of  Oregon ;  that  he  not  only 
never  uttered  or  wrote  a  single  sentence  depreciatory  of  the  value 
of  Oregon  to  the  United  States,  but  uniformly  used  the  most  ex- 
travagant language  about  the  soil,  the  climate,  the  fisheries  and 
the  commercial  possibilities  of  the  Oregon  Territory,  and  the  im- 
mense importance  of  our  asserting  our  title  to  it  and  occupying  it; 
and  that  the  steadfastness  and  persistence  with  which  upon  every 
possible  occasion  he  thus  spoke  and  wrote  about  it  from  1818  to- 
1840  made  him  an  important  factor,  though  by  no  means  the  chief 
one  in  securing  Oregon  to  us. 


178  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

Like  Jefferson,  and  Jackson,  and  {probably  a  large  majority  of 
the  members  of  his  party,  Benton  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  after 
he  began  his  open  and  constant  advocacy  of  the  acquisition  of  Ore- 
gon did  not  expect  that  it  would  permanently  remain  a  part  of  the 
United  States,  but  exj)ected  that  when,  by  migration  overland  from 
the  States  it  should  become  populous,  it  would  separate  from  us 
and  establish  a  new  republic  on  the  Pacific,  with  the  Kocky  Moun- 
tains as  a  natural  boundary  between  the  two  nations. 

This  view  often  expressed  by  him  (the  last  time,  as  far  as  I 
have  been  able  to  learn,  in  the  Senate,  August  18,  1842)  did  not, 
however,  in  the  least  diminish  the  intensity  of  his  conviction,  nor 
the  ardor  of  his  speech  in  favor  of  the  right  of  the  United  States 
to  the  Oregon  Territory  and  the  duty  resting  upon  us  to  assert  that 
right  and  drive  the  British  out,  and  occupy  and  settle  it  ourselves. 

One  looks  in  vain  through  his  ^'Thirty  Years'  View"  and  his 
"Abridgment  of  Debates  in  Congress"  for  any  intimation  that  he 
had  ever  held  any  such  opinion  about  the  final  destiny  of  Oregon, 
he  having  carefully  "abridged  out"  of  the  debates  all  the  things  he 
wished  he  had  not  uttered,  and  with  equal  care  omitted  to  include 
in  the  field  of  vision  of  his  "Thirty  Years'  View"  anything  which 
showed  that  he  was  not  as  wise  at  the  beginning,  or  the  middle  of 
his  career,  as  at  the  end. 

Personally,  outside  of  politics,  Benton  was  probity  itself,  but 
like  many  politicians  he  had  two  codes  of  honesty,  one  to  be  fol- 
lowed in  matters  outside  of  politics  and  another  and  very  difl'erent 
one  inside  of  politics,  the  consequence  of  which  is  that  his  "Thirty 
Years'  View"  and  his  "Abridgment  of  the  Debates  in  Congress" 
are  both  so  intensely  partisan,  and  so  often  distort  the  history  they 
ostensibly  illuminate  that  no  careful  student  dares  depend  on  them 
about  any  matter  affecting  the  political  struggles  which  filled  so 
much  of  Benton's  life,  or  on  any  other  matter  on  which  he  had  seen 
occasion  to  change  his  opinions  with  the  lapse  of  years. 

In  view  of  this  record  of  Benton's  uniform  and  enthusiastic 
advocacy  of  the  acquisition  of  Oregon  from  1818  to  1840,  and  his 
persistent  denunciations  of  Great  Britain's  claims  to  it,  one  would 
suppose  that  not  even  the  most  reckless  of  the  myth-loving  advo- 
cates of  the  Whitman  Legend,  seeking  to  find  support  for  the  in- 
dispensable postulate  of  that  story  that  our  leading  statesmen 
were  ignorant  about  Oregon  and  indifferent  to  its  fate,  and  even 
anxious  that  it  should  be  yielded  up  to  England,  would  have  the 
hardihood  to  misquote  Benton's  great  speech  of  1825  and  represent 
him  as  one  of  those  who  derided  Oregon  and  was  rather  anxious 
than  otherwise  that  it  should  be  yielded  to  Great  Britain.  Yet 
precisely  that  has  happened. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  179 

In  this,  as  in  most  of  the  misquotations  by  which  the  public  has 
been  completely  befogged  about  the  Oregon  acquisition.  Barrows' 
"Oregon"  seems  to  have  been  the  "original  sinner,"  with  Nixon's 
*'How  Marcus  Whitman  Saved  Oregon"  as  a  close  second. 

In  his  chapter  entitled  "Is  Oregon  Worth  Saving?"  after  some 
four  pages  packed  full  of  misstatements  of  facts  and  several  quo- 
tations from  the  Edinburgh  Review  and  the  London  Examiner, 
which  are  so  ingeniously  garbled  as  to  convey  to  the  minds  of  his 
readers  the  precise  opposite  of  the  ideas  which  the  articles  hon- 
estly quoted  would  convey,  Barrows  (on  p.  193)  continues  as  fol- 
lows: "Their"  (i.  e.,  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s)  "trappers  and 
traders,  in  a  gossipy  way,  were  undervaluing  Oregon,  as  the  stately 
quarterlies  were  doing  in  a  more  dignified  manner.  This  depre- 
ciating view  of  that  country  came  to  possess  our  own  literature 
and  popular  speech.  Captain  William  Sturgis,  who  had  traflicked 
on  the  Northwest  Coast  and  at  the  English  posts  there,  uses  this 
language  in  a  lecture  before  the  Mercantile  Library  Association  of 
Boston,  two  years  after  the  arrival  of  Whitman :  'Rather  than  have 
new  States  formed  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains,  to  be  added  to  our 
present  Union,  it  would  be  a  lesser  evil,  as  far  as  that  Union  is 
concerned,  if  the  unoccupied  portion  of  the  Oregon  Territory  should 
sink  into  Symmes'  Hole,  leaving  the  western  base  of  those  moun- 
tains and  the  borders  of  the  Pacific  Ocean  one  and  the  same.'  " 

The  plain  meaning  and  purpose  of  this  paragraph  is  that  in  this 
statement  Sturgis  was  merely  echoing  the  general  sentiment  of  the 
American  public  concerning  the  Oregon  Territory,  and  (not  being 
able  to  get  hold  of  a  copy  of  Sturgis'  lecture)  for  some  years  after 
I  became  fully  satisfied  that  that  was  untrue,  I  assumed  that  Bar- 
rows had  quoted  fairly  in  this  instance,  and  that  Sturgis  had  made 
the  statement  quoted,  supposing  that  in  that  opinion  he  was  in  ac- 
cord with  the  general  sentiment  of  his  countrymen.  But  finding 
in  the  Wisconsin  State  Historical  Society's  splendid  library  a  copy 
of  Sturgis'  lecture,  it  was  speedily  evident  that  Barrows  had  delib- 
erately deceived  his  readers  in  this  quotation. 

Sturgis'  lecture  was  delivered  January  22,  1845,  avowedly  to 
combat  the  "54  deg.  40  min.  or  fight"  craze,  and  to  persuade  the 
American  people  that  we  should  be  satisfied  with  49  degrees  as  the 
northern  boundary  of  Oregon,  and  referring  to  pp.  37,  42  and  44 
of  the  "Berlin  Arbitration,"  we  find  that  "it  exercised  quite  an  in- 
fluence" on  some  leading  English  statesmen. 

On  p.  22  of  Sturgis'  lecture  he  says:  "Our  Government,  on  the 
contrary,  seeks  the  acquisition  of  the  region  west  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains  as  an  extension  of  the  territory  of  the  United  States, 
to  be  used  hereafter  in  the  same  manner  as  any  other  portion  of 
our  territory  for  the  formation  of  new  States ;  for  this  purpose  the 


180  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

country  south  of  the  49th  parallel  of  latitude  is  most  conveuiently 
situated.  Being  the  portion  best  adapted  to  agriculture  and  (p. 
23)  manufacturing  purposes,  it  might  be  reasonably  expected  that 
we  should  be  content  with  this  division,  but  I  am  not  quite  sure 
that  our  Government  will  so  readily  accede  to  it.  The  people  of 
this  country  are  both  covetous  and  ambitious  in  regard  to  terri- 
tory. They  covet  and  are  ready  to  grasp  at  all  that  lies  upon  their 
borders,  are  ambitious  of  extending  their  empire  from  sea  to  sea, 
from  the  shores  of  the  Atlantic  to  the  borders  of  the  Pacific. 

"T  do  not  participate  in  this  feeling  and  have  little  sympathy 
with  those  who  cherish  it.  Settlements  scattered  over  a  vast  ex- 
tent of  territory — very  likely  to  l)e  badly  governed  in  time  of  peace 
and  certain  to  present  remote  and  exposed  points  to  be  defended 
in  times  of  war — will  not,  in  my  belief,  add  to  the  power  or  pro- 
mote the  prosperity  of  the  United  States." 

Then,  after  quoting  from  Presidents  Jackson  and  Jefferson,  Mr. 
Sturgis  goes  on  (p.  24)  as  follows:  "I  will  add  as  my  own  views, 
that  rather  than  have  new  States  formed  beyond  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains to  be  added  to  our  present  T^nion,  it  would  be  a  lesser  evil  so 
far  as  that  Union  is  concerned  if  the  unoccupied  portion  of  the 
Oregon  Territory  should  sink  into  Symmes'  Hole,  leaving  the 
western  base  of  those  mountains  and  the  borders  of  the  Pacific 
one  and  the  same.  But  as  this  consummation,  however  devoutly  it 
may  be  wished,  can  hardly  be  expected,  I  deem  it  very  desirable 
that  the  question  of  boundary  (p.  25)  should  be  speedily  adjusted, 
and  that  the  limits  of  the  rights  of  each  party  be  so  closely  estab- 
lished and  defined  as  to  prevent  all  danger  of  collision  hereafter. 
In  this  opinion  I  doubt  not  that  the  distinguished  statesmen, 
Messrs.  I'akenham  and  Calhoun,  who  now  have  charge  of  the  nego- 
tiation, will  cordially  concur;  and  it  seems  to  me  that  each  party 
will  attain  their  object,  and  justice  be  done  to  both,  by  adopting 
as  the  boundary  a  continuation  of  the  parallel  of  49  degrees  across 
the  Rocky  Mountains  to  tidewater,  say  to  the  middle  of  the  Gulf 
of  Georgia,  thence  by  the  northern  most  navigable  passage  (not 
north  of  49  degrees)  to  the  Straits  of  Juan  de  Fuca,  and  down  the 
middle  of  those  straits  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  the  navigation  of  the 
Gulf  of  Georgia  and  the  Straits  of  Juan  de  Fuca  to  be  forever 
free  to  both  parties;  all  the  islands  and  other  territory  lying  south 
and  east  of  this  line  to  belong  to  us,  and  all  north  and  west  to 
Great  Britain.  .  .  .  (P.  27)  Very  difterent  and  conflicting 
representations  have  been  made  by  different  writers  in  regard  to 
the  general  aspect  of  the  whole  territory,  and  its  adaptation  to 
agricultui-al  purposes;  some  have  described  it  as  a  perfect  paradise, 
while  by  others  it  has  been  represented  as  wild  and  sterile.  Ac- 
cording to  my  observation   both  are  exaggerated.      (P.   28)     The 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  181 

climate,  however,  is  altogether  milder  and  the  winter  less  severe 
than  on  this  side  of  the  continent,  and  more  nearly  resembles  the  cli- 
mate of  Europe." 

Could  human  ingenuity  more  completely  mislead  the  readers 
of  a  book  as  to  the  true  opinion  of  the  American  Government  and 
people  about  the  value  of  Oregon  than  Barrows  did  in  this  gar- 
bled quotation  from  Sturgis'  lecture? 

The  very  next  sentence  on  p.  193  of  Barrows'  '^Oregon,"  after 
this  garbled  quotation  from  Sturgis'  lecture,  is  the  following:  "A 
similar  view  of  Oregon's  value  probably  led  Benton  to  make  that 
remarkable  utterance  in  1825:  'The  ridge  of  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains may  be  named  without  offense  as  presenting  a  convenient, 
natural  and  everlasting  boundary.  Along  the  back  of  this  ridge 
the  western  limits  of  this  Republic  should  be  drawn,  and  the  statue 
of  the  fabled  god  Terminus  should  be  raised  upon  its  highest  peak 
never  to  be  thrown  down.'  " 

But  when  we  turn  to  the  speech  of  Benton,  from  which  these 
two  brief  sentences  are  taken,  we  find  it  covers  14  pages  of  the 
"Debates  in  Congress"  (not  Benton's  Abridgment,  but  the  full  offi- 
cial Debates  in  Congress),  18th  Congress,  2d  Session,  Vol.  1,  pp. 
699-713,  and  is  an  impassioned  plea  for  the  immediate  occupation 
of  Oregon,  and  that  instead  of  any  depreciatory  view  of  Oregon, 
it  expressed  a  higher  opinion  of  it  than  any  candid  and  well- 
informed  resident  of  that  Territory  would  today  say  is  fully  justi- 
fied by  the  facts,  as  appears  from  the  following,  which  Barrows 
does  not  quote:  "It  is  a  country  too  great  and  too  desirable  to 
remain  longer  without  civilized  inhabitants.  ...  In  extent, 
soil  and  climate  it  is  superior  to  the  old  thirteen  United  States." 

Then  (immediately  following  the  two  sentences  which  Bar- 
rows quotes)  Benton  goes  on  as  follows:  "In  planting  the  seeds 
of  a  new  power  on  the  coast  of  the  Pacific  Ocean,  it  should  be  well 
understood  that  when  strong  enough  to  take  care  of  itself  the  new 
government  should  separate  from  the  mother  empire  as  the  child 
separates  from  the  parent  at  the  age  of  maturity.  The  heights  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains  should  divide  their  possessions,  and  the 
mother  Republic  would  find  herself  indemnified  for  her  cares  and 
expenses  about  the  infant  power  in  the  use  of  a  port  on  the  Pacific 
Ocean,  the  protection  of  her  interests  in  that  sea,  the  enjoyment 
of  the  fur  trade,  the  control  of  the  Indians,  the  exclusion  of  a 
monarchy  from  her  border,  the  frustration  of  the  hostile  schemes 
of  Great  Britain,  and  above  all  in  the  erection  of  a  new  republic 
composed  of  her  children,  speaking  her  language,  inheriting  her 
principles,  devoted  to  liberty  and  equality,  and  ready  to  stand  by 
her  side  against  the  combined  powers  of  the  Old  World.  Gentle- 
men may   think  this  is   looking   rather  deep   into  the  chapter  of 


182  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

futurity,  but  the  contrary  is  the  fact.  The  view  I  take  is  both 
near  and  clear.  Within  a  century  from  this  day  a  population 
greater  than  that  of  the  present  United  States  will  exist  on  the 
western  side  of  the  Rocky  Mountains." 

Plainly  then,  instead  of  ^'similar  view  of  Oregon's  value"  caus- 
ing Benton  to  utter  this  sentiment  about  the  western  boundary  of 
the  United  States  being  the  crest  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  it  was 
his  belief  (in  which  doubtless  all  sensible  men  even  now  will  agree 
with  him),  that,  as  the  world  then  looked,  when  the  first  mile  of 
railroad  had  not  been  built,  when  the  telegraph  was  not  even 
dreamed  of,  and  the  successful  application  of  steam  to  ocean  navi- 
gation was  a  very  doubtful  problem,  the  government  by  the  United 
States  of  colonies  on  the  Pacific  Coast  when  they  should  become 
populous  from  the  migration  thither  of  our  citizens,  would  be  im- 
possible. Benton  continued  to  hold  this  view  certainly  as  late  as 
August  18,  1842,  for  in  that  part  of  his  famous  speech  against  the 
Ashburtou  treaty  which  denounced  it  because  it  did  not  settle  the 
Oregon  boundary,  he  most  vehemently  reiterates  all  these  senti- 
ments of  his  speech  of  March  1,  1825.  (Cf.  App.  to  Cong.  Globe, 
27th  Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  pp.  l-2().)  Just  when  and  why  he  changed 
his  opinions  (not  on  the  immense  value  of  the  Oregon  Territory  to 
the  United  States,  and  the  duty  of  the  Government  to  at  once  oc- 
cupy and  colonize  it — for  on  that  his  opinions  were  constant  from 
1818  [i.  e.,  before  he  entered  public  life]  down  to  the  date  of  the 
treaty  of  1846 — and  Cato  was  no  more  persistently  insistent  that 
Carthage  should  be  destroyed  than  Benton  was  during  all  those 
years  that  we  should  occupy  Oregon ;  but  as  to  the  possibility  of 
our  continuing  to  hold  it  after  we  should  have  populated  it  enough 
for  statehood)  it  seems  impossible  certainly  to  determine.  But  in 
his  two  long  speeches  in  the  Senate  on  the  great  debate  on  Ore- 
gon in  1842-3,  the  first  on  January  12,  1843,  and  the  second  on 
February  2,  1843,  he  says  nothing  about  Oregon  ever  separating 
from  the  United  States,  so  that  the  time  of  the  change  would  seem 
to  have  been  between  August  18,  1842,  and  January  12,  1843,  but 
I  know  of  no  clue  as  to  the  cause.  (Cf.  App.  to  Cong.  Globe,  27th 
Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  pp.  74-78  and  110-117.) 

Nixon  is  so  delighted  with  these  two  sentences  that  Barrows 
misquotes  from  Benton,  that  he  not  only  quotes  them  on  p.  40 
of  his  "How  Marcus  Whitman  Saved  Oregon,"  at  the  beginning 
of  his  attempt  to  show  what  he  is  pleased  to  call  (on  p.  41)  "the 
educating  j)ower  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  on  the  United  States, 
and  the  ignorance  of  our  statesmen  as  to  the  extent  and  value  of 
the  territory"  (i.  e.,  the  Oregon  Territory),  but  quotes  them  twice 
more  on  pp.  170  and  180,  of  course  with  no  reference  to  the  rest  of 
Benton's  speech,  or  the  place  where  his  readers  can  find  it,  and 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  183 

utterly  oblivious  of  the  fact  that  the  only  "ignorance"  displayed 
in  the  matter  is  his  own  total  ignorance  concerning  the  real  posi- 
tion of  Benton  and  all  our  other  leading  statesmen  from  1814  to 
1846  on  the  Oregon  question. 

Having  carefully  compared  every  quotation  in  Barrow's  **Ore- 
gon"  and  Nixon's  "How  Marcus  Whitman  Saved  Oregon"  with  the 
original  book,  Government  document,  magazine  or  newspaper  to 
which  it  is  credited — so  far  as  any  such  source  really  exists,  for 
some  of  their  alleged  quotations  are  pure  fabrications,  never  hav- 
ing appeared  in  the  sources  from  which  they  are  claimed  to  have 
been  quoted — I  can  assure  the  reader  that  on  any  important  dis- 
puted point  there  is  not  in  either  book  from  title  page  to  finis  a 
single  quotation  that  is  not  as  false  and  misleading  as  these  two 
from  Sturgis'  lecture  and  from  Benton's  1825  speech. 

Returning  now  to  the  record  of  governmental  action  on  the 
Oregon  question.  The  Senate  having  ratified  the  Convention  of 
August  6,  1827,  during  the  first  session  of  the  20th  Congress,  it 
was  proclaimed  May  15,  1828.  (Cf.  Doc.  492,  Am.  State  Papers, 
For.  Rel.,  Vol.  VI.,  p.  1000.) 

The  Senate,  in  the  first  session  of  the  20th  Congress,  1827-8, 
having  debated  every  phase  of  the  Oregon  question  in  executive 
sessions  during  the  discussions  on  the  ratification  of  the  second 
Treaty  of  Joint  Occupancy,  did  not  take  the  subject  up  again  for 
any  extended  discussion  till  the  second  session  of  the  25th  Con- 
gress, 1837-38,  though  in  the  mean  time  two  reports  were  made 
to  it — Benton's  on  the  Fur  Trade,  February  9,  1829,  and  the  report 
of  the  Military  Committee,  January  26,  1831,  which  were  very  valu- 
able— the  latter  especially  so. 

No  record  of  Benton's  report  is  to  be  found  in  the  official  re- 
port of  "Debates  in  Congress,"  but  turning  to  the  "Journal  of  the 
Senate"  we  find  (p.  47)  that  on  December  23,  1828,  on  motion  of 
Mr.  Benton  (chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Indian  Affairs),  and 
by  unanimous  consent,  it  was  "Resolved:  That  the  Committee  on 
Indian  Affairs  be  instructed  to  inquire  into  the  present  condition 
of  the  fur  trade  within  the  limits  of  the  United  States,  and  to  re- 
port what  measures,  if  any,  are  necessary  to  the  safe  and  success- 
ful prosecution  of  that  trade  by  citizens  of  the  United  States." 

February  9,  1829,  (p.  Ill)  "Mr.  Benton,  from  the  Committee 
on  Indian  Affairs,  who  were  instructed  by  a  resolution  of  the  Sen- 
ate on  the  23d  of  December  last  to  inquire  into  the  present  condi- 
tion of  the  fur  trade,  made  a  report,  accompanied  by  a  bill  for  the 
encouragement  of  the  fur  trade,  which  was  read,  and  ordered  that 
it  pass  to  a  second  reading,  and  that  the  report  be  printed." 

The  bill  provided  only  for  a  duty  on  foreign  furs  imported  into 
this  country,  but  no  legislation   was  effected,   as  the  same  com- 


184  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

plaints  were  made  as  to  the  disabilities  under  which  the  fur  trade 
suffered  in  the  letters  of  the  Kocky  Mountain  Fur  Co.  and  of  Major 
Pilcher,  and  of  Gen.  William  Clark  and  Hon.  Lewis  Cass,  in  Sen. 
Ex.  Doc.  39,  date  January  20,  1831. 

The  report  is  No.  37,  Sen.  Ex.  Doc,  20th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  and 
covers  19  pages. 

Benton  wrote  only  about  two  pages  of  the  report,  the  rest  be- 
ing extracts  from  a  message  of  Gov.  Miller  of  Missouri  to  the  Gen- 
eral Assembly  of  that  State,  dated  November,  1828;  a  memorial  of 
the  (Jeneral  Assembly  of  Missouri  to  Congress,  dated  December 
1828;  a  statement  by  Senator  Benton  to  the  Committee  on  Indian 
Affairs,  and  letters  as  follows:  One  each  from  Thomas  L.  McKen- 
ney,  Commissioner  of  Indian  Affairs ;  John  Jacob  Astor,  Hon.  C. 
C.  Cambreling,  and  one  signed  by  Gen.  William  Clark  of  Missouri 
and  Gov.  Lewis  Cass  of  Michigan,  and  two  from  W.  H.  Ashley,  the 
whole  concluding  with  a  page  from  the  ''History  of  the  Fur  Trade" 
(London,  1801)  by  Alex.  McKenzie,  the  sturdy  Scotchman,  long 
a  leader  of  the  "North  Westers,"  who  was  the  first  white  man  to 
go  overland  in  North  America  to  the  Arctic  Ocean,  which  he 
reached  in  1789,  and  the  first  to  cross  North  America  north  of 
Mexico,  reaching  the  Pacific  July  22,  1793,  in  latitude  52  deg.  20 
min.  and  48  sec. 

The  committee  urge  that  the  joint  occupancy  treaty  be  termi- 
nated and  a  boundary  line  established,  and  the  traders  of  both 
nations  confined  to  their  own  respective  territories,  and  suggested 
three  things  as  necessary  for  the  prosperity  of  the  fur  trade,  viz.: 

"(1)  A  reduction  of  duty  on  the  blankets,  shrouds  and  scarlet 
cloths  used  in  trade. 

"(2)  A  drawback  of  duties  upon  these  articles  when  carried 
into  the  Indian  countries  for  the  purposes  of  trade. 

"(3)     A  duty  on  foreign  furs." 

The  letters  published  in  the  report  endorsed  its  conclusions  and 
recommendations. 

McKenzie  seems  to  have  been  the  first  to  suggest  the  consoli- 
dation of  the  North  West  Co.  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  (Cf.  p. 
408  of  his  ''Journal  of  a  Voyage  Through  the  Northwest  Conti- 
nent of  America")  as  a  means  of  monopolizing  that  trade  in  Brit- 
ish North  America  and  in  the  Columbia  River  country,  and  as  a 
necessary  part  of  that  ])lan  urges  (in  the  page  which  Benton 
quotes  from  him)  that  the  British  should  insist  on  having  the  line 
between  their  North  American  possessions  and  the  United  States 
so  run  as  to  insure  them  the  control  of  the  Columbia,  as  being  the 
only  stream  on  the  Pacific  Coast  by  which  it  would  be  possible  to 
obtain  the  clioaj)  transit  of  goods  from  the  interior  of  the  mountain 
regions  to  the  ocean. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  185 

To  this  extract  from  McKenzie  Benton  appends  the  following 
characteristic  note:  "(N.  B.  This  is  the  origin  of  all  the  British 
claims  on  the  Columbia,  of  all  the  robberies  and  murders  now  go- 
ing on  there,  of  the  500  men  killed  and  the  $500,000  worth  of  prop- 
erty plundered  from  them  in  the  last  twenty  years.)     T.  H.  B." 

This  false  accusation  that  the  recommendations  by  McKenzie 
were  the  origin  of  all  the  British  claims  to  territory  on  the  Colum- 
bia, and  of  all  the  losses  of  life  and  property  by  our  citizens  en- 
gaged in  the  fur  trade  in  and  beyond  the  Kocky  Mountains,  were 
constantly  reiterated  by  Benton  to  the  end  of  the  Oregon  contro- 
versy in  1846. 

The  "Memoirs  of  John  Quincy  Adams"  (Vol.  XI.,  p.  37,  under 
date  of  December  10,  1841),  say  of  Caleb  Cushing,  what  might 
quite  as  appropriately  have  been  written  of  Benton,  as  follows : 

''Cushing  thought  that  inflammatory  declamation  against  Eng- 
land upon  all  possible  topics  was  the  short  cut  to  popularity,  and 
he  speechified  accordingly." 

Though  the  Senate  did  not  care  to  farther  debate  the  Oregon 
question  at  the  second  session  of  the  20th  Congress,  it  was  taken 
up  in  the  House  and  debated  vigorously  and  at  great  length,  the 
report  filling  85  columns,  or  one-tenth  of  the  whole  volume  of  the 
oflScial  report  of  ''Debates  in  Congress,"  being  more  space  than  was 
accorded  to  Oregon  in  any  other  session  till  the  third  session  of 
the  27th  Congress,  1842-43. 

This  great  debate,  in  which  the  sentiment  was  so  overwhelm- 
ingly in  favor  of  the  great  value  of  Oregon  to  us,  and  of  our  duty 
to  hold  it  at  least  up  to  49  degrees,  as  it  was  at  every  other  session 
which  discussed  the  subject,  has  either  been  ignored  or  misrepre- 
sented by  every  advocate  of  the  Whitman  Legend,  since  a  fair  pre- 
sentation of  it  would  utterly  overthrow  that  fundamental  postu- 
late of  the  Legend,  that  as  late  as  1843  our  Government  and  people 
were  ignorant  about  and  indifferent  as  to  the  political  destiny  of 
Oregon,  and  that  it  was  the  establishment  of  missions  to  the  Ore- 
gon Indians  in  1834  by  the  Methodist  and  1836  by  the  American 
Board  which  wakened  the  nation  to  an  appreciation  of  the  value 
of  Oregon. 

The  fact  is  that  as  early  as  the  autumn  of  1828,  before  there 
was  a  mile  of  railroad  on  this  continent,  and  five  years  before  there 
was  any  move  to  send  any  missionaries  to  Oregon,  and  eight  years 
before  Whitman  established  his  mission  there,  there  was  such  wide- 
spread interest  in  Oregon  that  in  regions  as  widely  separated  as 
Massachusetts,  Ohio  and  Louisiana  there  was  a  wholly  inexplicable 
craze  to  migrate  to  Oregon,  there  being  organizations  from  Boston, 
New  Orleans  and  Ohio  seeking  grants  of  large  tracts  of  land  in 
Oregon  from  this  second  session  of  the  20th  Congress. 


186  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

The  Massachusetts  Association  undoubtedly  was  mainly  the  re- 
sult of  the  untiring  efforts  of  Hall  J.  Kelley,  ever  since  1817,  to 
start  a  migration  to  Oregon,  but  I  have  never  been  able  to  discover 
what  caused  the  New  Orleans  and  the  Ohio  organizations. 

Barrows  is  chiefly  responsible  for  the  widespread  opinion  that 
the  nation  was  indifferent  about  Oregon,  and  his  treatment  of  this 
great  debate  is  a  fair  sample  of  the  disingenuous  treatment  he 
gives  to  the  whole  subject. 

On  p.  76  of  his  "Oregon"  he  says:  "This  renewal  of  the  ar- 
rangement of  1818  was  confirmed  by  Congress,  but  immediately  a 
great  and  protracted  debate  arose  in  that  body.  A  bill  was  re- 
ported in  the  House  authorizing  the  President  to  survey  the  terri- 
tory west  of  the  mountains  between  the  parallels  of  forty-two  and 
fifty-four  forty,  occupy  the  same  by  military  posts  and  garrisons 
and  extend  the  laws  of  the  United  States  over  it.  The  bill  was 
lost,  and  very  little  interest  on  the  subject  showed  itself  again  in 
Congress  for  many  years." 

To  the  ordinary  mind  it  would  seem  evident  that  if  there  was 
that  profound  ignorance  about  Oregon  till  Whitman  reached  the 
States  in  1843  which  his  book  continually  asserts,  "a  great  and 
protracted  debate  about  it"  in  Congress  in  1828-29  would  not  have 
occurred,  but  such  self-stultifications  as  that  are  common  in  this 
most  worthless  and  misleading  book,  whose  success  in  completely 
deceiving  the  public  about  the  whole  history  of  the  Oregon  acquisi- 
tion does  little  credit  to  the  historians  who,  without  investigating 
original  sources,  accepted  it  as  authority,  and  copied  its  shameful 
slanders  alike  of  American  statesmen  and  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.,  and  its  garbled  and  fabricated  quotations,  and  printed  them 
even  in  our  school  histories,  till  the  circulation  of  my  manuscripts 
in  1905  and  1900  drove  these  fictions  out  of  all  of  them  whose 
authors  cared  to  have  their  books  accurate. 

l*erhaps  the  most  striking  example  of  the  pernicious  influence 
of  Barrows  on  a  really  great  historian,  who  had  accepted  him  as 
authority  without  investigation,  is  seen  in  McMaster's  treatment 
of  this  debate,  in  Vol.  V.  of  his  "History  of  the  People  of  the  United 
States,"  pp.  477-83,  as  follows:  "The  debate  which  followed  richly 
deserves  to  be  read,  as  a  fine  illustration  of  how  little  the  men  of 
that  day  understood  the  marvelous  growth  of  their  country,  which 
in  less  than  twenty  years  was  to  found  two  States  in  the  region 
they  did  not  think  worth  having." 

To  support  this  assertion  that  "the  men  of  that  day"  did  not 
think  Oregon  "worth  having,"  McMaster  quotes  84  lines,  or  nearly 
three  pages,  from  the  speeches  of  Mitchell  of  Tennessee  and  Bates 
of  Missouri,  although  their  speeches  only  covered  one-fifth  of  the 
report  of  the  discussion ;  and  from  the  speeches  of  those  who  fa- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  187 

vored  the  acquisition  of  Oregon  (though  some  of  the  ablest  of  them 
opposed  the  pending  bill  as  in  violation  of  the  treaty  of  1827),  he 
only  quotes  11  lines,  or,  counting  his  own  abstracts  of  their  speeches 
with  the  quotations  he  makes  from  them,  he  only  prints  20  lines 
from  those  who  favored  the  Oregon  acquisition,  and  does  not  name 
a  single  one  of  them! 

But  Mitchell  and  Bates  were  two  absolute  political  nonentities, 
both  having  been  repudiated  by  their  constituencies  at  the  elections 
the  preceding  autumn — Mitchell  after  two  terms  and  Bates  at  the 
end  of  one  term  as  Representatives  in  Congress — and  but  for  these 
ridiculous  speeches  on  Oregon,  resurrected  to  seem  to  support  the 
Whitman  Legend,  they  would  both  have  rested  forever  in  the  po- 
litical oblivion  to  which  those  who  knew  them  best  had  consigned 
them  in  the  autumn  of  1828,  for  neither  of  them  ever  again  was 
able  to  achieve  an  election  to  any  office  as  important  as  Member 
of  Congress,  though  a  whole  generation  afterwards  Lincoln,  in 
1861,  finding  it  desirable  to  have  a  Cabinet  officer  from  a  border 
State,  called  Bates,  who  was  a  good  lawyer,  into  his  Cabinet  as 
Attorney-General,  where  he  served  two  and  a  third  years.  These 
two  men  from  whom  McMaster  quotes  nearly  three  pages  to  sup- 
port the  theory  that  "the  men  of  that  day  did  not  think  Oregon 
worth  having,"  served  therefore  an  aggregate  of  eight  and  one-third 
years  in  positions  as  important  as  or  more  important  than  a  Rep- 
resentative in  Congress;  and  the  name  of  neither  one  is  associated 
with  the  initiation  of  any  measure  of  the  slighest  consequence  in 
our  political,  or  economical,  or  social  condition. 

But  the  men  who  in  this  same  debate  favored  the  acquisition 
of  Oregon  included  two  who  were  subsequently  Presidents,  Polk 
and  Buchanan;  two  who  were  subsequently  Secretaries  of  State, 
Buchanan  and  Everett;  two  who  were  subsequently  Speakers  of 
the  House,  Taylor  of  New  York  for  3  years  and  Polk  of  Tennessee 
for  4  years;  two  who  were  subsequently  Senators,  Buchanan  for 
12  years,  and  Everett  for  1  year,  when  ill  health  compelled  his  res- 
ignation ;  two  who  were  subsequently  Ministers  to  England,  Bu- 
chanan for  3  years  and  Everett  for  4  years;  three  who  were  sub- 
sequently Governors,  Everett  of  Massachusetts  for  4  years,  Floyd 
of  Virginia  for  4  years,  Polk  of  Tennessee  for  2  years;  and  three 
who  were  subsequently  Ministers  to  Russia,  Buchanan  for  2  years, 
Cambrel ing  for  4  years,  and  Ingersoll  of  Connecticut  for  2  years 
when  he  resigned. 

In  the  list  were  also  the  following  elected  over  and  over  again 
to  the  House:  Buchanan,  Pa.,  10  years;  Cambreling,  N.  Y.,  18 
years;  Drayton,  S.  C,  8  years;  Everett,  Mass.,  10  years;  Gurley, 
La.,  8  years;  Floyd,  Va.,  12  years;  Ingersoll,  Conn.,  8  years;  Reed, 
Mass.    (from  his  long  service  often  called  "the  life  member"),  24 


188  ACQUISITWX    OF    OREGON 

years;  Storrs,  N.  Y.,  10  years;  Strong,  N.  Y.,  10  years;  Taylor,  N. 
Y.,  20  years;  Polk,  Tenn.,  14  years. 

Against  the  afi;fj:rej;^ate  of  eight  and  one-third  years  of  service  of 
Mitchell  and  liates  in  public  stations  as  important  as  or  more  im- 
portant than  Kepreseutative,  those  of  whom  McMaster  does  not 
mention  one  name,  and  froTii  whose  speeches  he  only  qnotes  and 
abstracts  less  than  one-quarter  of  what  he  quotes  from  liates  and 
Mitchell,  served  as  Representatives,  Senators,  Secretaries  of  State, 
Presidents,  Ministers  to  England  and  Russia  and  Governors  of 
States  an  aggregate  of  more  than  200  years. 

These  plainly  wei-e  the  strong  men  of  the  House — the  men  whose 
speeches  showed  whether  or  not  the  ''men  of  that  day  thought  Or- 
gon  worth  having." 

Let  lis  see  what  a  few  of  them  said,  as  stated  in  "Debates  in 
Congress,"  20th  Cong.,  2d  Sess. : 

Gurley  of  Louisiana  (p.l45)  "He  was  decidedly  opposed  to  the 
exploration  of  the  country  before  the  occupation  of  it,  as  was  sug- 
gested by  the  gentlemen  from  Missouri  and  New  York.  They 
should  be  simultaneous.  He  could  see  no  possible  object  in  it  un- 
less we  were  prepared  to  surrender  it  if  it  did  not  equal  our  ex- 
pectations, which  he  presumed  all  would  disdain. 

"If  it  was  as  barren  as  the  deserts  of  Siberia  we  should  never 
surrender  it,  and  he  would  do  nothing  that  could  be  so  construed, 
as  would  necessarily  be  such  a  proposition.  He  said  we  could  not 
surrender  the  territory  if  w^e  would. 

"We  were  already  committed  on  this  subject,  having  long  since 
made  and  published  to  the  world  that  no  foreign  power  should 
plant  a  colony  on  this  continent.  We.  could  not,  therefore,  without 
violating  our  own  honor,  truth  and  sincerity  voluntarily  surrender 
this  territory  to  any  foreign  power." 

Cambreling  of  New  York  (p.  171)  :  "But,  sir,  it  is  vain  to  talk 
of  surrendering  the  country  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains.  The 
gentleman  from  Missouri  asks  'If  we  will  fight  for  it,'  Yes,  sir,  if 
it  was  as  frightful  in  every  feature  as  that  gentleman  has  described 
it;  if  it  was  barren  as  the  Arabian  sands;  nay,  sir,  if  it  was  bleak 
and  desolate  as  an  iceberg,  the  American  people  would  never  yield 
it,  they  would  never  allow  themselves  to  be  dispossessed  of  it  by 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. ;  they  would  never  surrender  it  to  Great 
Britain. 

"They  ought  not.  A  people  who  would  be  governed  by  such  a 
I)olicy— who  would  not  go  to  war  in  defense  of  the  national  do- 
minion and  honor — should  withdraw  from  the  society  of  nations." 

Drayton  of  South  Carolina  (p.  142)  "The  British  settlers  in 
what  I  shall  term  the  territory  of  Oregon  (for  the  want  of  a  known 
appellation  distinguishing  the  territory  upon  the  northwest  coast 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  189 

of  America  in  dispute  between  Great  Britain  and  ourselves)  are 
already  protected."  ...  (p.  143,  1st  col.)  "From  the  distance 
of  the  territory  of  Oregon,  and  from  the  natural  barriers  and  ob- 
stacles by  land  which  are  interposed  between  it  and  the  United 
States,  I  have  never  dreamed  of  its  becoming  a  State. 

"I  believe  it  will  never  be  organized  as  a  territory.  I  much 
doubt  the  benefits  of  possessing  it;  but  we  have  it,  and  whether  we 
be  influenced  by  national  honor  and  policy  or  less  meritorious  mo- 
tives, we  shall  never  voluntarily  relinquish  it;  it  will  never  be 
yielded,  should  the  title  be  found  to  be  in  us,  but  to  superior  physi- 
cal power.  Considering  ourselves  as  rightfully  entitled  to  the 
country,  we  should  conduct  ourselves  towards  it  as  wise  and  poli- 
tic sovereigns;  as  such  we  ought,  in  the  most  economical  and  effi- 
cient manner  which  is  practicable,  to  secure  its  adherence  to  us, 
to  protect,  in  their  persons  and  in  their  property,  those  of  our  citi- 
zens who  inhabit  it,  or  who  may  occasionally  resort  to  it  in  the 
pursuit  of  their  lawful  occupations,  and  to  derive  from  it  all  the 
advantages  we  can.  The  measures  which  I  have  advocated  will,  it 
seems  to  me,  produce  these  results.  I  am,  therefore,  for  adopting 
them." 

Ingersoll  of  Connecticut  (p.  188)  "But,  when,  although  he  en- 
tertained these  opinions,  still,  when  the  question  was  put  and  turn 
it  as  you  may,  it  will  come  to  this,  whether  we  shall  surrender  this 
vast  territory  into  the  hands  of  the  British  or  maintain  our  own 
jurisdiction  there,  he  was  ready  to  give  a  positive  and  decisive 
answer.  It  should  not  with  his  consent  go  into  the  hands  of  a 
foreign  power." 

Buchanan  (p.  126)  "He  was  not  unfriendly  to  the  bill,  but 
thought  its  language  ought  to  be  studied  with  care  lest  the  nation 
should  inadvertently  compromise  its  own  rights.  He  disliked  the 
feature  in  the  amendment  which  proposed  a  monopoly  to  one  com- 
pany of  forty  miles  square;  and  believing  that  the  subject  required 
more  mature  consideration  moved  that  the  committee  rise,  and  it 
rose  accordingly." 

Everett  of  Massachusetts  (p.  126)  "Mr.  Edw.  Everett  stated 
that  in  that  part  of  the  country  from  which  he  came  there  was  an 
association  of  3,000  individuals,  respectable  farmers  and  indus- 
trious artisans,  who  stood  ready  to  embark  in  this  enterprise,  so 
soon  as  the  permission  and  protection  of  the  Government  should 
be  secured  to  them,  and  expressed  a  doubt  whether  an  exclusive 
grant  of  forty  miles  square  to  the  Louisiana  company  would  have 
a  just  and  proper  bearing  upon  other  settlers  equally  enterprising 
and  meritorious." 

Polk  of  Tennessee  (pp.  129-32)  showed  that  he  had  carefully 
studied  the  record  of  the  negotiations  of  1826-7  and  urged  caution. 


190  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

lest  the  bill  then  proposed  by  Floyd  of  Virginia,  as  chairman  of  the 
committee  on  the  Oregon  Territory,  should  conflict  with  the  treaty 
of  August  6,  1827,  and  so  involve  us  in  war  with  Great  Britain  and 
perhaps  result  in  loss  of  the  whole  territory  in  dispute.  On  p.  130 
he  says  that  in  the  discussion  of  the  question  between  Mr.  Gallatin 
and  the  British  plenipotentiaries  in  1827  the  question  of  exclusive 
occupancy  was  taken  up.  '*Mr.  Gallatin,  our  Minister,  in  a  letter 
dated  at  London,  June  27,  1827,  addressed  to  his  Government,  gives 
the  views  entertained  by  the  respective  parties.  He  says:  'The 
British  i)lenipotentiaries  had  it  in  contemplation  to  insert  in  the 
protocol  a  declaration  purporting  either,  that,  according  to  their 
understanding  of  the  agreement,  either  party  had  a  right  to  take 
military  i)ossession  of  the  country,  or,  that,  if  the  United  States 
did  establish  any  military  posts  in  the  country  Great  Britain 
would  do  the  same.'  They  preferred  the  first  mode,  as  the  other 
might  be  construed  by  the  United  States  as  having  the  appearance 
of  a  threat.  Great  Britain,  they  said,  had  no  wish  to  establish 
such  posts,  and  would  do  it  only  in  self-defense." 

"Again  they  say,  as  stated  by  Mr.  Gallatin  in  the  same  letter, 
'Occasional  disturbances  between  the  traders  of  the  two  countries 
might  be  overlooked;  but  any  question  connected  with  the  flag  of 
either  power  would  be  of  a  serious  nature,  and  might  commit  them 
in  a  most  inconvenient  and  dangerous  manner.'  "  (P.  132,  col.  1) 
''We  ought,  he  said,  to  pause  before  we  pass  this  bill ;  not  that  he 
would,  for  a  moment,  think  of  abandoning  our  title  (for  he  be- 
lieved it  to  be  the  better  one),  or  of  permitting  any  foreign  power 
to  become  the  owner  of  the  country. 

"We  should  not  act  now;  but  as  the  question  of  title  is  left  to 
future  adjustment  by  negotiation,  until  we  ascertain  that  there  is 
no  hope  for  regulating  it  by  the  Executive,  let  us  postpone  any 
measure  on  the  subject.  In  the  meantime,  he  would  not  permit 
Great  Britain,  or  any  other  power,  to  take  exclusive  possession  of 
it.  By  delay  we  can  lose  nothing.  By  acting  now,  we  may  hazard 
much." 

Early  in  the  debate  Floyd  (pp.  125-129)  "Adverted  to  a  peti- 
tion now  before  Congress  of  a  company  of  persons  in  New  Orleans 
offering  to  commence  a  colony  at  their  own  expense;  on  the  leader 
of  which  company,  a  former  schoolfellow  of  his  own,  he  bestowed 
the  highest  praise." 

Gurley  of  Louisiana  moved  as  an  amendment  to  the  bill  that 
the  New  Orleans  Co.  be  granted  forty  miles  square  of  land. 

The  next  day  this  amendment  of  Gurley's  was  modified  by 
striking  out  that  part  of  it  which  provided  that  our  Government 
should  extinguish  the  Indian  title  to  forty  miles  square  of  land  in 
favor  of  .John  M.  Bradford  and  his  associates   (a  company  of  ad- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  191 

venturers  proposing  to  set  out  from  New  Orleans)  ;  and  also  by  in- 
serting the  names  of  Paul  and  J.  Kelley  (doubtless  meant  for  Hall 
J,  Kelley)  and  his  associates  (a  similar  company  from  Massachu- 
setts) ;  and  Albert  Town  and  his  associates  (a  company  from  Ohio), 
as  entitled  to  the  permission  granted  by  the  bill  for  the  erection 
of  a  fort  on  certain  conditions. 

Later  Floyd  said:  (p.  192)  "On  all  occasions  the  Government 
seem  to  have  taken  upon  themselves  to  think  for  the  people;  and 
in  all  instances  have  been  behind  the  enterprise  of  private  indi- 
viduals— so  true  is  it  they  perceive  their  own  interests  long  before 
Oovernment  can  be  prevailed  upon  to  co-operate,  or  permit  them 
to  pursue  what  would  seem  to  be  manifest  to  all.  At  an  early  day 
Britain  attempted  to  arrest  this  wave  of  emigration,  which  was 
rolling  to  the  West;  and  by  proclamation  prohibited  any  from  set- 
tling beyond  the  Alleghany  Mountains,  which  was  at  that  time  a 
part  of  Louisiana,  according  to  the  claims  of  the  French  King.  Nor 
was  private  enterprise  more  successful  in  obtaining  the  approba- 
tion of  Government  in  the  settlement  of  Tennessee.  Gov.  Sevier, 
one  of  their  most  enterprising  and  respectable  citizens,  was  out- 
lawed for  making  the  attempt. 

"It  is  true  that  all  the  western  part  of  Virginia,  which  at  that 
day  comprised  the  country  on  the  southern  bank  of  the  Ohio  River 
from  its  mouth  to  the  Great  Kanawha,  was  settled  by  private  en- 
terprise, and  was  approved  by  that  State,  which  has  always  acted 
with  liberality  to  her  citizens.  Even  this  Government,  hardly  re- 
leased from  British  rule,  thought,  or  acted  as  though  it  thought, 
the  people  ought  to  be  directed  and  controlled  in  the  pursuit  of 
happiness,  as  they  attempted  to  arrest  or  prevent  the  settlement 
of  Boone's  Lick,  the  finest  and  most  fertile  portion  of  the  State  of 
Missouri.  The  result  was  a  complete  failure.  The  people  in  the 
pursuit  in  their  own  way  persisted,  disregarding  these  efforts,  and 
did  that  which  all  now  acknowledge  would  have  been  injurious  to 
the  country  to  have  failed  to  do." 

Richardson  of  Massachusetts  (one  of  the  committee  who  re- 
ported the  bill),  (on  p.  138)  said:  "But  the  descriptions  given  yes- 
terday by  gentlemen  (i.  e.,  Bates  and  Mitchell)  on  the  opposite 
side,  of  the  Oregon  Territory  have  almost  shaken  my  confidence  in 
the  correctness  of  the  judgment  I  had  formed.  They  have  de- 
scribed the  territory  as  a  region  of  desolation,  the  river  unnavi- 
gable,  the  whole  claim  as  worse  than  worthless,  and,  as  it  would 
seem,  even  reproachful  to  its  author. 

"How  are  these  contradictory  statements  to  be  accounted  for? 
Those  who  have  navigated  the  river  and  traversed  the  region  from 
the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Pacific  have  represented  the  country 
as  luxuriant  and  beautiful. 


192  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

"Sir,  I  am  old  enough  to  reineniber  having;  read  the  speeches  in 
Congress  on  the  question  of  tlie  acquisition  of  Louisiana,  when 
that  question  was  pending.  The  most  horrible  pictures  of  that 
country  were  drawn  in  Congress  and  spread  before  the  Union  to 
deter  the  Government  from  the  acquisition. 

"And,  sir,  I  have  read  accounts  published  by  foreign  travelers, 
and  which  were  spread  through  Europe,  describing  the  whole  of 
the  United  States  as  country  fit  to  be  inhabited  by  none  but  wild 
beasts  and  savages.  Of  such  accounts  there  were  latent  causes 
which  time  has  unfolded.  IJofore  the  face  of  the  world  events  have 
contradicted  those  accounts.  Surely  the  statements  of  gentlemen 
on  all  sides  of  what  they  have  not  seen  are  to  be  received  with 
caution." 

As  the  provisions  of  the  bill  plainly  violated  the  terms  of  the 
treaty  of  1827,  it  is  evident  that  it  was  not  designed  that  it  should 
be  enacted,  but  only  that  as  a  part  of  the  campaign  of  education 
and  stimulation  about  Oregon  it  should  be  thoroughly  debated, 
and  the  fact  that  our  Government — like  that  of  Great  Britain — 
could  not  grant  land  to  any  one  in  Oregon  while  that  treaty  re- 
mained in  force,  should  be  so  emphasized  that  those  infected  with 
the  Oregon  migration  fever  even  at  that  early  date,  might  under- 
stand that  although  our  Government  was  inflexibly  determined  to 
hold  Oregon,  at  least  as  far  north  as  49  degrees,  it  could  grant  no 
title  to  lands  in  Oregon  until  that  treaty  should  be  abrogated  and 
a  boundary  line  should  be  established  between  Oregon  and  the 
British  possessions  on  the  north  of  it. 

The  bill  was  finally  defeated  by  75  to  99. 

It  is  an  amusing  commentary  on  the  claims  made  by  Benton 
and  L.  G.  Taylor  and  some  others  that  Oregon  was  saved  to  the 
United  States  by  the  action  of  Western  and  Southern  men  against 
the  indifference  about  or  the  opposition  to  its  acquisition  of  the 
statesmen  from  the  Northeastern  States,  and  esi)ecially  New  Eng- 
land, that  in  this,  the  most  extensive  and  thorough  debate  ever 
had  on  Oregon  prior  to  that  of  the  winter  of  1842-3  in  the  Senate, 
the  only  two  Representatives  who  denounced  Oregon  worthless  and 
inaccessible  were  Mitchell  of  Tennessee  and  Bates  of  Missouri, 
while  of  the  fourteen  who  declared  in  most  em])hatic  terms  its 
great  value  and  insisted  that  we  owned  it,  and  sooner  or  later  would 
certainly  assert  our  title  to  it,  and  maintain  that  title  at  all  haz- 
ards, three — Everett,  Reed  and  Richardson  represented  Massachu- 
setts districts;  one— Tngersoll,  a  Connecticut  district;  and  four- 
Cambrel  ing,  Storrs,  Strong  and  Taylor  represented  New  York  dis- 
tricts, while  Gurley,  though  representing  a  Louisiana  district,  was 
born  and  reared  in  Connecticut  and  graduated  froin  Yale  College, 
and  Stronji  was  also  a  native  of  Connecticut. 


ACQUISITIONS'    OF    OREGON  193 

Ten  years  passed  before  there  was  another  considerable  debate 
on  and  committee  report  about  Oregon  in  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives. 

In  the  first  session  of  the  21st  Congress  there  was  no  discus- 
sion about  Oregon,  but  early  in  the  session  a  resolution  was  passed 
requesting  the  President  to  transmit  any  information  in  his  pos- 
session respecting  the  British  establishments  on  the  Columbia  and 
the  state  of  the  fur  trade. 

January  24,  1831,  Jackson  wrote  a  very  brief  message,  trans- 
mitting letters  of  Gen.  W.  H.  Ashley,  Maj,  Joshua  L.  Pilcher, 
Smith,  Sublette  and  Jackson,  or  the  Rocky  Mountain  Fur  Co.,  and 
Lewis  Cass  and  Gen.  William  Clark.  January  25,  1831,  it  was  read 
and  referred  to  the  Committee  on  Military  Affairs,  and  January 
26  it  was  reported  back  from  that  committee,  and  1,500  copies  or- 
dered printed  besides  the  usual  number  for  the  use  of  the  Senate. 
It  is  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  No.  39,  Vol.  I.,  21st  Cong.,  1st  Sess.  (p.  34),  and 
with  its  descriptions  of  Ashley's  method  of  conducting  his  fur  trad- 
ing expeditions,  and  Pilcher's  simple,  straightforward  and  graphic 
story  of  his  remarkable  explorations,  and  his  descriptions  of  passes 
over  the  Continental  Divide  by  which  wagons  could  be  easily  driven 
into  the  Oregon  Territory;  and  the  Rocky  Mountain  Fur  Co.'s  re- 
cital of  their  extensive  operations  and  explorations  (with  from  80 
to  100  men  divided  into  small  parties)  of  "all  the  country  beyond 
the  Rocky  Mountains  from  the  Gulf  of  California  to  the  mouth  of 
the  Columbia,"  and  the  story  of  their  successful  experiment  in 
driving  10  five-mule  wagons  and  two  Dearborns  or  light  wagons 
from  St.  Louis  to  the  foot  of  the  South  Pass  and  back  to  St.  Louis, 
between  April  10  and  October  10,  1830,  and  their  declaration — 
based  not  on  conjecture,  but  on  the  knowledge  derived  from  their 
own  explorations — that  they  could  have  driven  the  wagons  to  the 
Great  Falls  of  the  Columbia  if  they  had  cared  to  do  it,  make  this 
one  of  the  most  valuable  documents  ever  printed  concerning  the 
Rocky  Mountain  and  Pacific  regions,  and  one  which  is  still  and 
must  ever  be  full  of  interest  to  all  who  care  to  know  the  true  his- 
tory of  the  development  of  the  region  beyond  the  Missouri. 

I  have  quoted  from  it  at  some  length  in  Chapter  V.,  and  must 
quote  more  from  it  in  Chapter  VII.,  and  will  only  say  here  that 
it  was  repeatedly  referred  to  and  its  essential  portions  not  only  re- 
printed in  later  Government  reports  and  in  debates  in  Congress, 
but  also  in  newspapers  and  magazine  articles. 

On  the  1st  of  August,  1831,  Jackson's  Administration  took  up 
again  the  diplomatic  phase  of  the  question,  but  England  not  caring 
to  settle  the  matter  then,  no  farther  offer  was  made  by  our  Gov- 
ernment to  negotiate  upon  it  for  more  than  a  dozen  years  there- 
after 


194  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

The  only  record  I  have  foimd  of  this  1831  effort  is  on  pp.  29-30 
of  Sen.  Ex.  Doe.  489,  29th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  in  a  letter  from  James 
Buchanan,  Secretary  of  State,  to  Louis  McLane,  then  our  Minister 
to  England,  dated  July  12,  1845,  in  a  resume  of  the  diplomacy  of 
the  Oregon  question  up  to  that  time,  as  follows:  "The  next  notice 
of  this  question  will  be  found  under  the  administration  of  General 
Jackson.  It  is  contained  in  the  instructions  of  Mr.  Livingston 
(Secretary  of  State),  to  Mr.  Van  Buren  (our  Minister  to  England), 
dated  on  the  1st  of  August,  1831.  .  ,  .  After  stating  that  the 
term  of  joint  occupation  was  indefinitely  continued  for  the  pur- 
])Ose,  in  the  language  of  the  treaty,  'of  giving  time  to  mature  meas- 
ures which  shall  have  for  their  object  a  more  definite  settlement 
of  the  claims  of  each  jjarty  to  the  said  territory,'  they  go  on  to 
remark  that  'this  subject,  then,  is  o{)en  for  discussion ;  and  until 
the  rights  of  the  parties  can  be  settled  by  negotiation,  ours  can 
suffer  nothing  by  delay.'  From  the  1st  of  August,  1831,  the  date 
of  Ml-.  Livingston's  instructions  to  Mr.  Van  Buren,  until  the  9th 
of  October,  1843,  no  further  notice  of  the  Oregon  question  was 
taken  in  any  instructions  from  this  department.  On  that  day  Mr. 
Upshur,  then  the  Secretary  of  State  under  Mr.  Tyler's  administra- 
tion, addressed  instructions  to  Mr.  Everett  on  that  subject." 

But  as  w'e  shall  speedily  see  there  was  abundance  of  executive 
and  Congressional  action  in  these  twelve  years  to  acquire  and  dis- 
seminate far  and  wide,  not  only  in  this  country,  but  in  England 
also,  full  and  very  valuable  information  about  Oregon,  and  to  in- 
form not  only  our  own  citizens,  but  the  English  people  and  Govern- 
ment as  well,  that  we  were  determined  at  all  hazards  to  hold  Ore- 
gon as  far  north  as  the  49th  degree. 

May  21,  1831,  Capt.  B.  L.  E.  Bonneville  wrote  to  Maj.  Gen. 
Alex.  Macomb,  commanding  the  United  States  Army,  asking  leave 
of  absence  for  his  famous  expedition  to  the  Rocky  Mountains, 
partly  for  fur  trading  and  trapping  and  ])artly  for  geographical 
exi)loration,  and  observation  of  the  British  and  American  trading 
establishments  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains.  (Cf.  Bonneville's 
[unpublished]   Application  for  Furlough  in  War  Dept.  archives.) 

August  3,  1831,  Gen.  Macomb  wrote  him  that  his  application 
had  been  submitted  to  the  War  Department  and  approved,  and 
leave  of  absence  granted  him  until  October,  1833,  and  after  enum- 
erating many  things  which  it  was  desired  he  should  observe  and 
report  to  the  Government,  he  concluded  with  ''in  short,  every  in- 
formation w^hich  you  may  conceive  would  be  useful  to  the  Govern- 
ment."    (Cf.  App.  to  Irving's  Bonneville.) 

May  1,  1832,  with  110  men  and  20  wagons,  he  set  out  from  the 
Missouri  frontier.  T^nforeseen  delay  caused  him  to  overstay  his 
furlough,  and  he  did  not  reach  the  frontier  settlements  of  Missouri 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  195 

on  his  return  till  August  22,  1835,  and  meanwhile,  as  very  full  dis- 
patches which  he  had  confided  to  Mr.  Cerre  in  1833  had  failed  to 
reach  Washington,  by  the  order  of  President  Jackson  his  name  was 
stricken  from  the  army  rolls,  and  it  was  with  very  considerable 
difficulty  that  he  secured  its  restoration.  He  subsequently  was  in 
command  of  Fort  Vancouver,  after  the  United  States  Government 
took  the  old  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  post  there  as  a  military  reservation, 
and  served  faithfully  in  the  civil  war,  rising  to  be  Colonel  and 
Brevet  Brigadier  General,  and  remained  an  army  officer  till  his 
death,  June  12,  1878,  after  being  an  officer  in  the  army  621/2  years. 

We  have  already  learned  that  he  developed  the  first  transconti- 
nental wagon  road  from  where  the  Rocky  Mountain  Fur  Co. 
stopped  in  1830,  at  the  east  end  of  the  South  Pass,  by  driving  his 
twenty  loaded  wagons  through  that  broad,  grassy  valley  over  the 
summit  of  the  Continental  Divide  and  into  the  Oregon  Territory 
some  sixty  miles  to  Green  River. 

Irving's  ''Bonneville"  (published  in  both  New  York  and  Lon- 
don in  1837,  as  his  "Astoria"  had  been  in  1836) — and  ever  since 
one  of  the  most  widely  read  books  of  western  travel  and  adven- 
ture— stimulated  interest  in  and  determination  to  hold  Oregon  in 
all  parts  of  our  land,  as  "Astoria"  had  done. 

Bonneville's  unpublished  dispatches,  and  still  more  his  personal 
interviews,  undoubtedly  gave  much  valuable  information  about  the 
operations  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  the  face  of  the  country,  the 
resources  and  the  climate  of  Eastern  Oregon — for  he  did  not  get 
as  far  west  as  the  Cascades,  turning  back  from  the  Columbia  at  a 
point  about  midway  between  Fort  Walla  Walla  and  the  Dalles. 
(Cf.  Bonneville,  Chapter  46.) 

No  sooner  had  Bonneville  reported  in  Washington  than  Presi- 
dent Jackson  determined  to  have  a  report  from  a  competent  man 
of  the  then  existing  conditions  in  Western  Oregon,  and  selected 
Lieut.  William  A.  Slacum  of  the  Navy  for  the  task,  and  (for  some 
reason  unknown),  issued  through  the  State,  and  not  the  Navy  De- 
partment, the  following  letter  of  instructions  to  him : 

"State   Dept.,   Washington,   Nov.    11,    1835. 
"Lieut.  William  A.  Slacum, 

"Sir:  Having  understood  that  you  are  about  to  visit  the  Pa- 
cific Ocean  the  President  has  determined  to  avail  himself  of  the 
opportunity  thus  afforded  to  obtain  some  specific  authentic  informa- 
tion in  regard  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  country  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  the  Oregon  or  Columbia  River.  In  the  belief  that  you  will 
willingly  lend  your  services  in  the  prosecution  of  this  object,  I  now 
give  you,  by  the  President's  direction,  such  general  instructions  as 


196  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

may  be  necessary  for  your  guidance  in  the  execution  of  the  pro- 
posed commission. 

"I'pon  your  arrival  on  the  northwest  coast  of  America  you  will 
embrace  the  earliest  oj)portunity  to  proceed  to  and  up  the  river 
Oregon,  by  such  conveyances  as  may  be  thought  to  offer  the  great- 
est facility  for  attaining  the  end  in  view. 

*'You  will,  from  lime  to  time,  as  they  occur  in  your  progress, 
stop  at  the  different  settlements  of  whites  on  the  coast  of  the 
United  States,  and  on  the  banks  of  the  river,  and  also  at  the 
various  Indian  villages  on  the  banks  or  in  the  immediate  neighbor- 
hood of  that  river;  ascertain  as  nearly  as  possible  the  population 
of  each;  the  relative  number  of  whites  (distinguishing  the  nations 
to  which  they  belong)  and  aborigines;  the  jurisdiction  the  whites 
acknowledge;  the  sentiments  entertained  by  all  in  respect  to  the 
United  States  and  to  the  two  European  powers  having  possessions 
in  that  region ;  and,  generally,  endeavor  to  obtain  all  such  informa- 
tion, political,  physical,  statistical  and  geographical  as  may  prove 
useful  or  intei-esting  to  this  Government.  For  this  purpose  it  is 
recommended  that  you  should  whilst  employed  on  this  service  keep 
a  journal  in  which  to  note  down  whatever  may  strike  you  as  worthy 
of  observation,  and  by  the  aid  of  which  you  will  be  enabled,  when 
the  journey  is  com})leted,  to  make  a  full  and  accurate  report  to  the 
Department  of  all  the  information  you  may  have  collected  in  re- 
gard to  the  country  and  its  inhabitants. 

''Your  necessary  and  reasonable  traveling  expenses  will  be  paid 
from  the  beginning  of  your  journey  from  the  coast  of  the  Pacific  to 
the  Columbia  River  and  till  your  return  to  this  city. 

"(Signed)     JOHN  FORSYTH, 

"Secretary  of  State." 

Slacunvs  report  is  to  be  found  in  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  24,  25th  Cong., 
2d  Sess.,  Vol.  I.  (p.  31),  read  December  18,  1837,  and  ordered 
printed  and  i^eferred  to  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations,  consist- 
ing of  I?uchanan,  Clay,  Tallmadge,  Rivers  and  King  of  Alabama; 

He  left  Guaymas,  Mexico,  June  1,  1836,  had  much  difficulty  in 
reaching  the  Sandwich  Islands,  but  arrived  there  November  5,  1836, 
and  chartered  the  brig  Loriot,  and  on  November  24  set  sail  for  the 
Columbia  River,  and  arrived  there  December  22,  1836. 

On  the  lOth  of  February,  1837,  he  sailed  out  of  the  Columbia 
and  towards  Bodega  and  the  Russian  Settlement  in  California. 

His  "Report"  proper  begins  on  p.  3  of  his  memorial,  and  is 
dated  "American  Brig  Loriot,  off  San  Bias,  March  26,  1837,"  and 
is  very  valuable  and  was  re])eatedly  quoted  in  later  committee  re- 
ports to  both  the  Senate  and  the  House,  and  referred  to  in  debates 
in  both  Houses  as  of  the  highest  value. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  197 

Its  most  important  parts  are:  (1)  The  account  of  the  forma- 
tion of  the  company  which  went  to  California  and  purchased  a 
large  band  of  cattle.  (2)  The  statements  concerning  the  agri- 
cultural and  stock  raising  value  of  the  Oregon  country.  (3)  The 
enthusiastic  argument  for  our  insisting  on  holding  the  Puget  Sound 
region,  as  follows : 

(P.  12)  ''In  the  course  of  conversation  with  Mr.  Lee,  Young 
and  other  settlers,  I  found  that  nothing  was  wanting  to  insure 
comfort,  wealth  and  every  happiness  to  the  people  of  this  most 
beautiful  country  but  the  possession  of  neat  cattle,  all  of  those  in 
the  country  being  owned  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  who  refuse  to 
sell  them  under  any  circumstances  whatever.  I  then  proposed  to 
give  as  many  of  the  settlers  as  chose  to  embark  in  the  Loriot  a 
free  passage  to  California,  where  they  might  procure  cattle  at  |3.00 
a  head." 

(P.  13)  "I  advanced  Mr.  Lee  |500.  This  sum,  added  to  the 
contributions  of  the  settlers,  produced  |1,600,  a  sum  sufficient  to 
purchase  500  head  of  cattle  in  California."  .  .  .  "At  a  public 
meeting  that  took  place  at  'Camp  Maud  De  Sable'  on  the  subject 
of  the  expedition  to  California  the  liveliest  interest  appeared  to  be 
felt  when  I  told  the  'Canadians'  that,  although  they  were  located 
within  the  territorial  limits  of  the  United  States,  their  pre-emption 
rights  would  doubtless  be  secured  to  them  when  our  Government 
should  take  possession  of  the  country." 

It  is  plain  that  without  this  initiative  by  Slacum  there  would 
have  been  no  cattle  company,  and  as  appears  from  the  "Copy  of  a 
Document  by  Dr.  McLoughlin,  'He  subscribed  in  behalf  of  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  for  one-half  the  stock  of  the  cattle  company.'  " 

Yet  the  writers  who  seek  to  make  it  appear  that  everything 
good  in  the  early  settlement  of  Oregon  was  due  to  the  Methodist 
and  American  Board  missionaries  ascribe  this  entire  project  to 
Rev.  Jason  Lee,  and  those  of  them  who  are  most  malignant  to- 
wards the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  accuse  that  company  of  having  bit- 
terly opposed  the  cattle  company,  Gray  even  going  so  far  as  to 
accuse  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  of  inciting  the  Rogue  River  Indians 
"to  destroy  the  expedition."  (Cf.  Gray's  "History  of  Oregon,"  p. 
156;  Spalding's  pamphlet,  [Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  No.  37,  41st  Cong.,  3d 
Sess.],  p.  75.) 

(P.  16  "I  consider  the  Willhamet"  (Willamette)  ''the  finest 
grazing  country  in  the  world.  Here  there  are  no  droughts,  as  on 
the  pampas  of  Buenos  Ayres  or  the  plains  of  California,  whilst  the 
lands  abound  with  richer  grasses,  both  in  winter  and  summer." 

(P.  17)  "It  may  be  fairly  estimated  that  the  valleys  of  the 
rivers  certainly  within  the  limits  of  the  United  States  (exclusive 
of  the  Columbia  and  Willamette)  contain  at  least  14,000,000  acres 


198  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

of  laud  of  first  quality,  equal  to  the  best  lauds  of  Missouri  or  Illi- 
nois. ...  I  beg  leave  to  call  your  attention  to  the  topography 
of  'Pugitt's  Sound,'  and  urge  in  the  most  earnest  manner  that  this 
point  should  never  be  abandoned.  If  the  United  States  claim,  as 
I  hoj)e  they  ever  will,  at  least  as  far  as  49  degrees  of  north  lati- 
tude, ruuuing  due  west  from  the  'Lake  of  the  Woods'  on  the  above 
parallel  we  shall  take  in  'Pugitt's  Sound,'  In  a  military  point  of 
view,  it  is  of  (he  highest  importance  to  the  United  States.  . 
1  hoi)e  our  claim  to  54  degrees  of  north  latitude  will  never  be 
abandoned;  at  all  events,  we  should  never  give  up  Pugitt's  Sound, 
nor  permit  the  free  navigation  of  the  Columbia,  unless,  indeed,  a 
fair  equivalent  was  otl'ered,  such  as  the  free  navigation  of  the  St. 
Lawrence." 

It  is  a  very  significant  fact  that  less  than  eight  months  after 
this  earnest  plea  by  this  naval  officer  for  holding  on  to  the  Puget's 
Sound  region  was  read  in  Congress,  the  Navy  Department,  on  Au- 
gust 11,  IS'AS,  in  its  "instructions"  to  Lieut.  Charles  Wilkes,  when 
setting  sail  in  command  of  by  far  the  most  extensive  exploring  ex- 
pedition this  Government  has  ever  sent  out,  consisting  of  six  ships 
and  nearly  (iOO  men,  specifically  directed  him  to  spend  six  months 
of  the  three  years  that  it  was  then  supposed  would  be  required  for 
the  whole  exploration,  as  follows:  "Thence"  (/.  e.,  from  the  Sand- 
wich Islands  in  April)  "you  will  direct  your  course  to  the  north- 
west coast  of  America,  making  such  surveys  and  examinations,  first 
of  the  territory  of  the  United  States  on  the  seaboard  and  of  the 
Columbia  Kiver,  and  afterwards  along  the  coast  of  California,  with 
special  reference  to  the  Bay  of  San  Francisco,  as  you  can  accom- 
plish b}'  the  month  of  October  following." 

How  faithfully  Wilkes  carried  out  these  instructions  in  the 
summer  of  1841  and  of  what  great  value  not  only  Congress  but  the 
nation  at  large  deemed  his  "Special  Report"  of  his  work  in  Oregon, 
filed  in  the  Navy  Departuient  June  13,  1842,  we  shall  see  a  little 
later,  but  we  must  first  consider  what  was  done  about  Oregon  in 
the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives  in  1838-1842. 

At  the  first  (or  special)  session  of  the  25th  Congress  the  House 
of  Representatives,  on  October  9,  and  the  Senate,  on  October  16, 
1837,  unanimously  adopted  resolutions  requesting  the  President: 
"If  not  incompatible  with  the  public  interests,  to  communicate 
to  each  body  at  the  next  session  of  Congress  information  as  to 
whether  any,  and  if  so,  what  portion  of  the  territory  of  the  United 
States  west  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  bordering  on  the  I'acific 
Ocean  is  in  the  possession  of  any  foreign  power,  and  if  so,  in  what 
way,  by  what  authority  and  how  long  such  possession  or  occupancy 
has  been  kept."  The  Senate  resolution  also  asked  that  there  should 
be  communicated  any  correspondence  between  our  Government  and 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  199 

any  foreign  Government  relative  to  the  occupation  of  said  terri- 
tory. 

These  resolutions  were  referred  to  the  State  Department  for  a 
report,  and  December  22,  1837,  to  the  Senate,  and  December  26, 
1837,  to  the  House  of  Representatives,  President  Van  Buren  sent 
two  line  messages  of  transmittal  of  the  two  reports  of  John  For- 
syth, Secretary  of  State,  in  response  to  these  resolutions.  To  each 
body  the  Report  stated  that  the  Astoria  establishment  had  passed 
into  the  hands  of  the  British  North  West  Co.  by  sale  of  Astor's 
interest,  during  the  war  of  1812,  and  on  the  consolidation  of  that 
company  with  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  it  had  passed  to  and  remained 
in  possession  of  that  company,  and  that  its  retention  by  them,  and 
the  establishment  of  other  trading  posts  by  them  within  the  Ore- 
gon Territory  was  not  deemed  incompatible  with  the  provisions  of 
the  treaties  of  1818  and  1827.  The  Senate  was  also  informed  that 
no  correspondence  had  been  had  on  the  occupation  of  the  said  ter- 
ritory with  any  foreign  government  since  the  convention  of  August 
6,  1827,  was  made.  (Cf.  Messages  and  Papers  of  the  Presidents. 
Richardson,  Vol.  III.,  pp.  397-8.) 

At  the  second  session  of  the  25th  Congress  (December  11,  1837, 
to  July  9,  1838),  on  February  7,  1838,  Senator  Lewis  F.  Linn  of 
Missouri  introduced  a  bill  to  establish  Oregon  Territory.  (Cf. 
Cong.  Globe,  p.  168.) 

This  was  debated  by  Clay  of  Kentucky,  Buchanan  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, Linn  and  Benton  of  Missouri  and  Lyon  of  ,  and  in 

the  course  of  the  debate  Clay  declared  (p.  169)  that  he  had  intro- 
duced the  word  ''possessions"  into  the  Treaty  of  Ghent  for  the  pur- 
pose of  securing  (as  it  did)  the  restoration  of  Astoria  to  the  United 
States. 

February  13,  1838,  the  Senate  unanimously  adopted  a  motion 
calling  on  the  Secretary  of  War  to  send  to  the  Senate  all  informa- 
tion in  his  Department  relating  to  the  Oregon  Territory  and  to 
have  a  map  of  the  territory  made  for  the  use  of  the  Senate.  (Cong. 
Globe,  p.  179.) 

June  6,  1838,  Linn,  as  chairman  of  the  Select  Committee  on  the 
Oregon  Territory,  presented  a  report  (Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  470,  25th 
Cong.,  2d  Sess.)  covering  23  pages,  with  a  copy  of  the  famous  Ul- 
timatum Map. 

It  begins  with :  "The  attention  of  the  Government  has  been,  on 
several  occasions,  called  to  this  important  subject  by  bills  and  reso- 
lutions, through  able  and  elaborate  reports  from  committees  of 
Congress,  and  in  various  Executive  communications."' 

On  the  question  of  our  right  to  the  Oregon  Territory  it  says: 
(p.  3)  "This  question  has  been  so  ably  argued  by  the  late  Gov- 
ernor Floyd,  who  was  the  first  to  urge  on  Congress  the  use  and 


200  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

occupation  of  the  Oregon  Territory,  by  Mr.  F.  Baylies,  in  two  re- 
ports to  the  House  of  Representatives,  and  in  the  diplomatic  cor- 
respondence of  our  (lovernnient  with  (Jreat  Britain,  and  in  various 
other  public  docunieiits,  as  to  make  it  unnecessary  for  us  to  go  at 
large  into  this  subject." 

On  p.  2  it  quotes  in  full  the  letter  of  instructions  from  the  State 
Department  to  Lieut.  Slacum  (as  hereinbefore  given),  and  on  later 
pages  quotes  freely  from  Slacum's  Report,  not  forgetting  to  include 
(on  p.  10)  his  eulogy  of  Puget's  Sound  (hereinbefore  quoted),  and 
from  the  Reports  of  J>ewis  and  (^lark,  and  J.  B.  Prevost,  and  from 
Irving's  "Astoria,"  and  also  quotes  (pp.  20-23)  Gray's  "Log  Book 
of  the  Columbia,"  May  7-21,  1792. 

On  p.  31,  after  briefly  reciting  that  Col.  Dodge,  between  May 
29  and  September  10,  1S35,  had  marched  three  companies  of  the 
Second  Regiment  of  Dragoons  (with  two  pieces  of  artillery  and  two 
wagon  loads  of  flour,  and  25  head  of  beef  cattle),  from  Fort  Leav- 
enworth up  the  Platte  River  to  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  after  a 
month's  stay  there  had  continued  south  to  the  Arkansas  River,  and 
thence  back  to  Leavenworth,  a  distance  of  1,000  miles,  and  had 
only  lost  one  man  on  the  whole  trip,  the  report  continues:  "Col. 
Dodge  is  decidedly  of  the  opinion  that  an  army  could  march  with 
ease  from  our  western  confines  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  taking  with  it 
all  its  artillery,  munitions  of  war  and  provisions." 

On  p.  11,  speaking  of  the  Continental  Divide,  it  says:  "This 
line  of  continuous  mountains,  when  viewed  at  a  distance,  every- 
where seems  impassable ;  the  mind  shrinks  or  recoils  from  such 
frowning  and  forbidding  obstacles.  But  within  ten  or  fifteen  years 
passes  of  such  gentle  ascent  have  been  discovered  that  loaded 
wagons  easily  traverse  them." 

Though  the  23  pages  of  text  is  valuable,  it  contains  absolutely 
nothing  new,  and  the  chief  importance  of  this  report  is  that  it  is 
the  first  one  of  four  Congressional  reports  on  Oregon  to  use  the 
map  i)repared  by  the  War  Department  "for  use  of  the  Senate"  in 
accordance  with  its  unanimous  resolution  of  February  13,  1838. 

Of  this,  and  Slacum's  Chart  of  the  Columbin  (which  was  also 
used)  the  committee  said:  (P.  19)  "The  map  of  the  Territory  of 
Oregon,  and  chart  of  the  Columbia  River,  which  accompany  this 
report,  are  believed  to  be  the  most  correct,  and  furnish  the  most 
recent  and  authentic  information,  of  any  yet  published,  and  were 
prepared  by  Colonel  Abert,  of  the  Topographical  Bureau,  with 
much  care  and  labor.  The  chart  was  made  by  Mr.  Slacum,  after 
his  recent  visit  to  Oregon." 

This  maj)  shoAved  our  line  as  49  degrees  through  to  the  Pjicific, 
and  bore,  in  plain  type  out  in  the  "Pacific  Ocean,"  where  no  bound- 
ary line,  or  mountain  chain,  or  stream,  or  anything  else  in  the 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  201 

slightest  degree  obscured  it,  the  following  legend:  "The  prolonga- 
tion of  the  49th  parallel  from  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Pacific 
has  been  assumed  as  the  northern  boundary  of  the  United  States 
possessions  on  the  Northwest  Coast,  in  consequence  of  the  follow- 
ing extract  from  the  Hon.  H.  Clay's  letter  to  Mr.  Gallatin,  dated 
June  19,  1826  (see  Doc.  199,  20th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  H.  of  R.)  :  'You 
are  authorized  to  propose  the  annulment  of  the  third  article  of  the 
Convention  of  1818,  and  the  extension  of  the  line  on  the  parallel 
of  49  degrees  from  the  eastern  slope  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  where 
it  now  terminates  to  the  Pacific  Ocean  as  the  permanent  boundary 
between  the  two  powers  in  that  quarter.  This  is  our  ultimatum, 
and  you  may  so  announce  it.'  " 

Of  this,  which  may  properly  be  called  the  "Ultimatum  Map"  of 
Oregon,  C/ongress  ordered  20,000  copies  in  three  other  Reports,  viz. : 
10,000  in  Cushing's  Report  (1839)  ;  5,000  in  Pendleton's  first  Re- 
port (May,  1842)  ;  and  5,000  in  Pendleton's  second  Report  (Janu- 
ary, 1843). 

As  these  were  "besides  the  usual  number  for  the  use  of  Con- 
gress" (which  was  1,500  copies)  the  entire  number  on  the  four  Re- 
ports was  about  26,000. 

How  was  it  possible  for  our  Government  more  emphatically  to 
announce  to  all  the  world  its  inflexible  determination  to  adhere  to 
its  ultimatum  of  1826,  and  insist  on  49  degrees  as  the  northern 
boundary  of  Oregon,  than  by  thus  publishing,  in  four  Reports — in 
1838,  1839,  1842  and  1843  (all  unanimous  by  the  committees,  and 
all  unanimously  adopted  by  the  Senate  or  the  House) — 26,000 
copies  of  this  "ultimatum  map,"  a  map  not  published  by  some  irre- 
sponsible publisher,  but  prepared  by  the  War  Department  at  the 
unanimous  request  of  the  Senate,  which  is  a  part  of  the  treaty 
making  power  in  our  Government? 

No  advocate  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  seems  ever 
to  have  heard  of  our  1826  "ultimatum  instructions"  to  Gallatin 
hereinbefore  quoted,  nor  of  this  "Ultimatum  Map,"  and,  so  far  as 
I  have  been  able  to  ascertain,  I  am  the  first  writer  on  Oregon  his- 
tory who  has  mentioned  either  President  Adams'  "Ultimatum  in- 
structions" to  Gallatin  in  1826,  or  this  "Ultimatum  Map"  of  1838- 
1843. 

At  this  second  session  of  the  25th  Congress  the  Message  of 
President  Van  Buren  of  December  26,  1837,  relating  to  Oregon 
was  referred  to  the  Committee  on  Foreign  Affairs,  of  which  Caleb 
Gushing  of  Massachusetts  (one  of  the  ablest  lawyers  of  the  land) 
was  a  member  (Cf.  Cong.  Globe,  25th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  401),  and 
May  17,  1838,  Gushing  delivered  a  very  able  speech  covering  12i/^ 
columns.  (Cf.  App.  to  Cong.  Globe,  25th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  565, 
for  verbatim  report  of  this  speech.)     In  this  Speech  he  appealed  to 


202  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

ex-President  John  Q.  Adams,  then  a  member  of  the  House,  for  con- 
firmation of  the  accuracy  of  his  statements  of  the  facts  as  to  our 
right  to  Oregon,  characterizing  Mr.  Adams  as  "A  living  record  of 
the  diplomatic  history  of  the  country," 

In  this  speech  (App.,  p.  567,  2d  col.)  Gushing  said:  "Mr.  Astor 
ofifered  to  renew  his  enterj)rises  on  the  Columbia,  provided  the 
Government  would  establish  a  military  post  there  with  the  most 
trilling  force,  even  a  lieutenant's  command;  needing  only  the  coun- 
tenance and  flag  of  the  Ignited  States.  If  his  advice  had!  been 
adopted  the  question  would  have  been  settled  then  before  tlie  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  had  struck  root  in  the  Territory." 

No  report  on  Oregon  was  made  to  the  House  at  this  session, 
but  at  the  third  session  Gushing,  from  the  Committee  oa  Foreign 
Affairs,  on  January  4,  1839,  made  a  report  of  51  pages,  of  which, 
on  motion  of  John  Q.  Adams,  10,000  extra  copies  were  ordered 
printed  (a  number  fully  equivalent  to  50,000  copies  at  the  present 
time),  and  on  February  IG,  1830,  he  made  a  supplemental  report 
of  Gl  pages,  of  which  also  10,000  copies  were  ordered  printed. 

The  two  were  printed  together  as  "Report  No.  101,  House  of 
Representatives,  25th  Cong.,  3d  Sess.,"  with  the  "T'ltimatum  Map." 
It  discusses  all  phases  of  the  Oregon  question  very  thoroughly,  for 
few  men  in  America  had  so  carefully  studied  that  question  or  writ- 
ten so  much  upon  it  as  Gushing.  In  the  North  American  Review — 
then  by  far  the  most  influential  magazine  published  in  the  United 
States,  and  the  only  one  which  exercised  any  influence  on  opinion 
in  England — he  had  published  three  long  articles  on  the  Northwest 
Coast  of  America:  October,  1828  (3G  pp.);  January,  1837  (37 
pp.)  ;  January,  1839  (34  pp.)  ;  and  these  were  followed  January, 
1840,  by  an  article  of  70  pp. 

On  p.  15  of  his  Report,  discussing  the  various  (and  as  the  Eng- 
lish diplomats  and  writers  had  claimed  conflicting)  grounds  under 
which  the  United  States  claimed  Oregon,  he  says:  "Though  their 
several  claims"  {i.  e.,  under  Capt.  Gray's  discovery;  the  Louisiana. 
Purchase;  the  explorations  of  Lewis  and  Clark;  the  Astoria  settle- 
ment, and  the  Florida  Purchase)  "conflicted  with  each  other  orig- 
inally, they  acquired  mutual  strength  in  the  same  hands;  as  if 
three  persons  claim  the  same  estate,  one  by  deed  or  devise,  another 
by  inheritance,  and  a  third  by  possession,  the  union  of  all  in  one 
person  by  purchase  or  otherwise  would  result  in  the  best  of  titles." 

On  p.  10  he  gives  the  following  s])lendid  description  of  the  re- 
sistless westward  movement  of  our  ])oj)ulation :  "Who  shall  under- 
take to  define  the  limits  of  the  ex]>ansibility  of  the  United  States? 
Does  it  not  flow  westward  with  the  never  ceasing  advance  of  a  ris- 
ing tide  of  the  sea?    Along  a  line  of  more  than  a  thousand  miles 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  203 

from  the  Lakes  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  perpetually  moves  forward 
the  westward  frontier  of  the  United  States. 

''Here,  stretched  along  the  whole  length  of  this  line,  is  the  van- 
guard as  it  were  of  the  onward  march  of  the  Anglo-American  race, 
advancing,  it  has  been  calculated,  at  the  average  rate  of  about  one- 
half  a  degree  of  longitude  each  succeeding  year.  Occasionally  an 
obstacle  presents  itself,  in  some  unproductive  region  of  country  or 
some  Indian  tribe;  the  column  is  checked;  its  wings  incline  to- 
wards each  other;  it  breaks;  but  it  speedily  reunites  again  beyond 
the  obstacle,  and  resumes  its  forward  progress,  ever  facing,  and 
approaching  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  remotest  regions  of  the  West. 
This  movement  goes  on  with  the  predestined  certainty  and  the  un- 
erring precision  of  the  great  works  of  Providence,  rather  than  as 
an  act  of  feeble  man.  Another  generation  may  see  the  settlements 
of  our  people  diffused  over  the  Pacific  slope  of  the  Rocky  Mountains. 
It  is  idle  to  suppose  any  new  colony  to  be  sent  out  by  Great  Britain 
will  or  can  establish  itself  in  the  far  West,  ultimately  to  stand  in 
competition  with  this  great  movement  of  the  population  and  power 
of  the  United  States." 

As  to  the  unanimity  with  which  all  our  leading  statesmen  had 
supported  our  claim  to  Oregon,  this  Report  says:  (on  p.  22)  ''The 
committee  beg  leave  to  subjoin,  that  in  the  course  of  this  Report 
they  have  not  undertaken  to  raise  any  novel  pretensions  in  behalf 
of  the  United  States.  They  have  relied  on  the  grounds  of  right 
alleged  by  every  American  statesman  who  has  had  occasion  to  ex- 
amine the  subject  from  the  time  of  Mr.  Jefferson  to  the  present 
day;  referring  more  especially  to  the  instructions,  correspondence 
and  despatches  of  Mr.  Monroe,  Mr.  Adams,  Mr.  Rush,  Mr.  Clay, 
Mr.  Gallatin  and  Mr.  Lawrence  and  the  reports  of  Mr.  Floyd,  Mr. 
Baylies  and  Mr.  Linn,  and  superadding  only  such  further  illustra- 
tions, facts  and  arguments  as  the  personal  research  of  the  com- 
mittee has  brought  to  their  knowledge." 

It  quotes  fully  from  the  previous  reports  of  Baylies,  Linn  and 
Slacum,  including  Slacum's  enthusiastic  endorsement  of  the  Pu- 
get's  Sound  region  (which  Linn  had  quoted),  and  N.  J.  Wyeth's 
Memoir ;  also  the  Memorial  of  36  settlers  in  the  Willamette ;  also  a 
letter  from  J.  K.  Paulding,  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  stating  that  he 
had  directed  ''the  commander  of  the  squadron  in  the  Pacific  to  em- 
ploy a  sloop  of  war  in  making  a  close  and  accurate  survey  of  this 
part  of  the  Strait  of  Juan  de  Fuca,  with  a  view  to  ascertain  its 
advantages  as  a  station  or  harbor  for  ships  of  war  over  the  Co- 
lumbia;" also  a  letter  from  Rev.  Mr.  Tracy  of  Lynn,  Mass.,  contain- 
ing an  exposition  of  the  views  and  objects  of  the  "Oregon  Provis- 
ional Emigration  Society"  formed  in  August,  1836,  and  having  for 
its  object  the  planting  of  Christian  American  Settlements  in  Ore- 


204  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

gon,  and  enclosing  a  copy  of  the  Oregonian,  a  monthly  periodical 
devoted  to  the  interests  of  the  society,  and  saying  that  "Not  less 
than  200  men  will  compose  our  first  migrating  company." 

At  this  third  session  of  the  25th  Congress  in  the  Senate  on  De- 
cember 11,  1838,  Linn  introduced  a  bill  for  the  occupation  of  the 
Columbia  or  Oregon  Territory,  which  was  read  twice  and  referred 
to  a  Select  Committee  consisting  of  Linn  (chairman),  John  C.  Cal- 
houn, Henry  Clay  and  Franklin  Pierce.     (Cf.  Cong.  Globe,  p.  22.) 

January  28,  1839,  Linn  reported  a  bill  for  the  occupation  of 
Oregon,  which  after  brief  debate  was  referred  to  the  Committee  on 
Foreign  Affairs,  of  which  James  Buchanan  was  chairman  and  H. 
Clay  a  member. 

Twenty-sixth  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  December  9,  1839,  to  July  21, 
1840.  December  18,  1839,  Linn  ''Introduced  a  joint  resolution  de- 
claring that  our  title  to  the  Oregon  was  ipdisputable,  and  will 
never  be  abandoned,''  and  that  the  Government  should  give  the 
requisite  twelve  months'  notice  that  we  desired  to  terminate  the 
Convention  of  August  6,  1827,  for  extending  the  laws  of  the  United 
States  over  Oregon,  for  raising  soldiers  to  protect  immigrants  to 
Oregon;  and  for  giving  640  acres  of  land  in  Oregon  to  each  white 
male  of  18  years  of  age,  resident  of  the  Territory,  who  would  live  on 
and  cultivate  it  for  five  years.  January  8,  1840,  these  resolutions 
were  referred  to  a  Select  Committee  consisting  of  Linn,  Walker, 
Preston,  Pierce  and  Sevier. 

By  far  the  most  important  action  on  the  Oregon  question  of 
this  session  of  Congress  was  the  publication  of  the  first  or  Gov- 
ernment edition  of  "Greenhow's  History,"  as  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  No. 
174,  2()th  Cong.,  1st  Sess. — a  document  of  immense  significance  in 
this  discussion,  and  of  which  no  advocate  of  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  Legend  seems  ever  to  have  heard,  till  my  manuscripts  with 
their  criticisms  of  Barrows,  and  Nixon,  and  Craighead  for  omitting 
to  mention  this — caused  Mowry  and  M.  Eells  in  1901  to  mention 
its  existence,  but  without  quoting  from  it  or  otherwise  giving  their 
readers  any  idea  of  its  importance. 

It  is  the  only  official  history  of  any  of  our  territorial  acquisi- 
tions which  our  Government  has  ever  printed  while  the  title  was 
still  in  dispute,  and  the  account  of  its  origin  given  in  its  preface 
is  full  of  interest  when  we  remember  not  only  that  the  Senate  Se- 
lect Committee  on  Oregon  adopted  it  as  their  report,  but  that  the 
Senate  unanimously  accej)ted  the  report  and  ordered  2,500  copies 
of  it  printed  in  addition  to  the  usual  number — which  was  a  very 
liberal  number  for  the  time.  It  was  also  immediately  published 
in  New  York  City,  and  also  in  London  by  Wiley  and  Putnam,  as 
a  book  for  general  sale,  without  a  word  of  change  except  striking 
off  from  the  title  page  the  fact  that  it  was  a  Government  docu- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  205 

ment.  The  English  charged  that  the  publication  of  the  London 
edition  was  paid  for  by  the  United  States  Government,  and  un- 
doubtedly some  of  the  Secret  Service  fund  was  used  for  that  pur- 
pose. The  work  covered  228  pages,  with  a  map  and  a  good  index, 
and  was  highly  commended  not  only  by  Senators  and  Members  of 
the  House  of  Representatives,  but  also  by  the  Edinburgh  Review. 
Its  preface  begins  as  follows: 

''The  following  correspondence  between  the  chairman  of  the 
Committee  of  the  Senate  on  the  Oregon  Territory  and  the  Secre- 
tary of  State,  together  with  extracts  from  the  Journal  of  the  Sen- 
ate, will  serve  to  show  the  circumstances  under  which  this  Memoir 
has  been  written  and  published: 

"Washington,  January  25,  1840. 

''Sir:  I  am  informed  that  your  department  is  in  possession  of 
much  information  relating  to  the  Territory  of  Oregon,  its  geog- 
raphy, resources,  and  the  title  of  the  United  States  to  the  same. 
If  consistent  with  your  duty,  I  would  be  pleased  to  be  put  in  pos- 
session of  such  papers  and  documents  as  you  may  think  proper 
to  send  me,  requesting  that  you  will  mark  such  as  you  would  rather 
not  have  printed  or  made  public. 

"Your  obedient  servant, 

"L.  F.  LINN, 
"Chairman  of  the  Select  Committee  on  the  Territory  of  Oregon. 

"Hon.  John  Forsyth,  Secretary  of  State." 

"Answer.  "Department  of  State, 

"Washington,  January  25,  1840. 
"Sir:  I  have  had  the  honor  to  receive  your  letter  of  this  day's 
date,  asking  for  information  relative  to  the  Territory  of  Oregon,  its 
geography,  and  resources,  and  the  title  of  the  United  States  to  the 
same.  Mr.  Greenhow,  the  translator  and  librarian  of  this  depart- 
ment, has  been  for  some  time  past,  by  my  direction,  employed  in 
collecting  and  arranging  historical  information  on  the  subject  of 
the  northwestern  coasts  of  America;  I  send  you  the  result  of  his 
labors,  and  submit  it  to  the  discretion  of  the  committee  to  be 
printed  or  not,  as  they  may  think  most  advisable.  Not  having  had 
the  leisure  to  compare  the  statements  in  the  Memoir  with  the 
various  works  and  documents  upon  which  they  are  founded,  I  can 
vouch  for  the  zeal,  industry  and  good  faith  of  Mr.  Greenhow,  by 
whom  they  were  prepared. 

"I  am,  sir,  your  most  obedient  servant, 

"JOHN  FORSYTH, 
"Hon.  Lewis  F.  Linn,  "Secretary  of  State. 

"Senator  of  the  United  States." 


206  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

"From  the  Journal  of  the  Senate  of  the  United  States: 

''Monday,  February  10,  1840.  On  motion  of  Mr.  Linn,  'Ordered, 
that  a  History  of  the  Northwest  Coast  of  North  America  and  the 
adjacent  territories,  communicated  to  the  Select  Committee  on  the 
Oregon  Territory,  be  printed,  with  the  accompanying  map,  and  that 
two  tliousand  five  hundred  coj)ies,  in  addition  to  the  usual  number, 
be  printed  for  the  use  of  the  Senate." 

How  perfectly  well  known  were  the  facts  about  the  easy  accessi- 
bility of  the  Oregon  Territory  by  wagon  and  its  value  for  agri- 
culture and  grazing  will  be  apparent  from  the  following  extracts 
from  this  Government  Edition  of  Greenhow. 

(P.  12)  "Near  the  ])lace  of  union  of  these  chains  is  a  remark- 
able depression  of  the  Kocky  Mountains,  called  the  Southern  Pass, 
affording  a  short  and  easy  route  for  carriages,  between  the  head- 
waters of  the  south  branch  of  the  Platte,  on  the  east,  and  those  of 
the  Colorado,  in  the  west;  from  which  latter  is  another  pass 
through  the  mountains,  northward,  to  the  Lewis  River.  There  are 
other  depressions  on  the  great  chain  farther  north,  between  the 
Yellowstone,  on  the  one  side,  and  the  Salmon  River  and  Flathead 
branches  of  the  (■olumbia,  on  the  other;  but  they  offer  much  greater 
difficulties  to  the  traveler  than  the  Southern  Pass,  which  is,  and 
will  probably  continue  to  be,  the  principal  avenue  of  communica- 
tion between  the  United  States  and  the  territories  of  the  Far 
West." 

Instead  of  misinformation  from  English  sources,  Mr.  Greenhow 
copies  mostly  from  the  sturdy  American,  Nathaniel  J.  Wyeth  (who 
in  1832  had  led  out  the  first  party  of  American  settlers  to  Oregon), 
as  follows: 

(P.  15)  After  describing  "the  Multnomah  or  \yallamet"  as 
flowing  for  more  than  200  miles  "through  a  valley  which  is  said 
to  be  the  most  delightful  and  fertile  spot  in  North  America,"  and 
going  on  to  speak  of  all  of  Oregon  west  of  the  Cascade  Mountains, 
he  continues :  "  'This  country,'  says  Mr.  Wyeth,  'is  well  calculated 
for  wheat,  barley,  oats,  rye,  pease,  apples,  potatoes,  and  all  the 
roots  cultivated  in  the  northern  States  of  the  Union;  Indian  corn 
does  not  succeed  well,  and  is  an  unprofitable  crop.  The  yield  of 
wheat,  with  very  poor  cultivation,  is  about  fifteen  bushels  of  the 
best  quality  to  the  acre.  Horses  and  neat  cattle  succeed  tolerably 
w^ell ;  the  winter  being  mild,  they  are  enabled  to  subsist  uj)on  the 
produce  of  the  open  fields.  Hogs  live  and  multiply,  but  cannot  be 
made  fat  on  the  range  of  the  country.  The  agriculture  of  this 
region  must  always  suffer  from  the  extreme  dryness  of  the  sum- 
mer. The  ])rodu('(s  which  ri]»en  earliest  sustain  the  least  damage, 
but  those  which  come  late  are  often  injured.' 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  207 

"Of  the  soil  of  this  region  the  same  acute  observer  says:  'The 
uphmds  are  tolerably  good,  but  the  cost  of  clearing  the  enormous 
growth  of  timber  on  them  would  be  beyond  their  worth;  it  is  too 
thick  and  heavy  to  allow  of  crops  being  obtained  by  girdling  the 
trees,  and  it  must  be  removed  or  burnt;  the  labor  of  which  is  be- 
yond the  conception  of  those  acquainted  only  with  the  forests  of 
the  United  States.  There  are,  however,  prairies  sufficiently  numer- 
ous and  extensive  for  the  cultivation  of  the  next  century,  which, 
being  chiefly  on  the  second  bottoms  of  rivers,  are  extremely  fertile 
and  above  inundation.' " 

On  p.  16,  after  a  general  description  of  Middle  Oregon  (/.  e., 
the  region  between  the  Cascade  Mountains  and  the  Blue  Moun- 
tains), he  continues:  "Few  attempts  at  cultivation  have  been 
made  in  this  region,  and  they  have  not  been,  upon  the  whole,  suc- 
cessful. Wyeth  conceives  that  'the  agriculture  of  this  territory 
must  always  be  limited  to  the  wants  of  a  pastoral  people,  and  to 
the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  streams  and  mountains;  and  irriga- 
tion must  be  resorted  to  if  a  large  population  is  to  be  supported 
in  it.  This  country,  which  afifords  little  prospect  for  the  tiller  of 
the  soil,  is  perhaps  one  of  the  best  for  grazing  in  the  world.  It  has 
been  much  underrated  by  travelers  who  have  only  passed  by  the 
Columbia,  the  land  along  which  is  a  collection  of  sand  and  rocks, 
and  almost  without  vegetation ;  but  a  few  miles  from  the  Colum- 
bia, towards  the  hills  and  mountains,  the  prairies  open  wide,  cov- 
ered with  a  low  grass  of  a  most  nutritious  kind,  which  remains 
good  throughout  the  year.  In  September  there  are  slight  rains,  at 
which  time  the  grass  starts ;  and  in  October  and  November  there 
is  a  good  coat  of  green  grass,  which  remains  so  until  the  ensuing 
summer;  and  about  June  it  is  ripe  in  the  lower  plains,  and,  drying 
without  being  wet,  is  like  made  hay;  in  this  state  it  remains  until 
the  autumn  rains  again  revive  it.  The  herdsman  in  this  extensive 
valley  (of  more  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  in  width)  could 
at  all  times  keep  his  animals  in  good  grass,  by  approaching  the 
mountains  in  summer,  on  the  declivities  of  which  almost  any  cli- 
mate may  be  had;  and  the  dry  grass  of  the  country  is  at  all  times 
excellent.  It  is  in  this  section  of  the  country  that  all  the  horses 
are  reared  for  the  supply  of  the  Indians  and  traders  in  the  in- 
terior. It  is  not  uncommon  that  one  Indian  owns  some  hundreds 
of  them.  I  think  this  section,  for  producing  hides,  tallow  and  beef, 
is  superior  to  any  part  of  North  America ;  for,  with  equal  facilities 
for  raising  the  animals,  the  weather  in  winter,  when  the  grass  is 
best,  and  consequently  the  best  time  to  fatten  the  animals,  is  cold 
enough  to  salt  meat,  which  is  not  the  case  in  Upper  California. 
There  is  no  question  that  sheep  might  be  raised  to  any  extent,  in 
a  climate  so  dry  and  sufficiently  warm  and  where  very  little  rain 


208  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

or  snow  falls."  .  .  .  (p.  199)  The  first  emigrations  from  the 
United  States  for  the  jmrpose  of  settlement,  without  any  special 
commercial  views,  in  the  countries  of  the  Columbia,  appear  to 
have  been  made  in  1832.  Two  years  afterward  a  small  colony  of 
Americans  was  established  on  the  Wallamet,  about  seventy  miles 
from  its  mouth,  under  the  direction  of  Mr.  Jason  Lee  and  other 
Methodist  clergymen ;  and  since  that  period  the  number  of  citizens 
of  the  United  States  permanently  residing  beyond  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains has  been  much  increased.  ^Yith  regard  to  the  condition  of 
these  settlements  no  information  has  been  recently  obtained.  In 
1837  they  were  all  prospering;  and  it  may  be  supposed  that  they 
are  continuing  to  do  well,  inasmuch  as  a  large  number  of  emigrants 
sailed  for  the  Columbia  from  New  York  in  the  autumn  of  last  year, 
under  the  superintendence  of  one  of  the  founders  of  the  Wallamet 
colony ;  and  other  persons  are  said  to  be  now  in  that  city  prepar- 
ing for  a  similar  expedition. 

"It  is  not,  however,  by  means  of  such  long  and  dangerous  voy- 
ages that  citizens  of  the  United  States  are  to  etfect  settlements  in 
Northwest  America;  and  it  will  doubtless  be  the  care  of  their  Gov- 
ernment to  render  smoother  and  more  secure  the  routes  across  the 
continent  to  those  countries  lying  entirely  within  the  undisputed 
limits  of  the  Republic.  In  the  possession  of  these  routes  the  Amer- 
icans have  infinite  advantages  over  the  British,  and  all  other  na- 
tions, for  occupying  the  regions  in  question ;  and  nothing  more  is 
required  to  render  the  journey  through  them  safe  and  easy  than 
the  establishment  of  a  few  posts,  at  convenient  distances  apart,  on 
a  line  between  the  Missouri  and  the  passes  of  the  Rocky  Mountains, 
which  may  serve  as  forts  to  overawe  the  savages,  and  as  caravan- 
series  for  the  repose,  and  possibly  even  for  the  supply,  of  travelers. 
When  this  has  been  done,  the  American  settlements  on  the  Colum- 
bia will  soon  acquire  that  degree  of  extent  and  stability  which  will 
render  nugatory  all  claims  on  the  part  of  other  nations  to  the  i)OS- 
session  of  those  countries. 

"Within  the  last  tive  or  six  years  the  Government  as  well  as 
the  people  of  the  United  States  have  begun  to  devote  their  atten- 
tion seriously  to  matters  connected  with  the  northwest  regions  of 
this  continent.  Numerous  petitions  have  been  presented,  and  mo- 
tions have  been  made  and  discussed,  in  both  Houses  of  the  Federal 
Legislature,  for  the  annulment  of  the  existing  arrangement  with 
Great  Britain,  the  military  occupation  of  those  territories,  and  the 
extension  of  American  jurisdiction  over  them;  and  the  Executive 
has  been  sedulously  engaged  in  collecting  the  information  which 
may  be  necessary  in  order  to  place  the  subject  in  a  proper  light, 
and  to  render  movements  effective  at  the  proper  time.  These  pro- 
ceedings are  all  so  recent,  and  so  well  known,  that  details  respect- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  209 

ing  them  would  be  needless.  Suffice  it  to  say,  that  no  resolution 
has  been  taken  on  any  of  the  plans  proposed;  and  that  the  posi- 
tion of  the  American  Government  with  regard  to  the  territories 
claimed  for  the  United  States  on  the  Pacific  continues  as  fixed  by 
its  conventions  with  Great  Britain,  Russia  and  Mexico. 

''The  writer  has  now  completed  the  task  assigned  to  him. 

"He  has,  as  he  conceives,  demonstrated  that  the  titles  of  the 
United  States  to  the  possession  of  the  regions  drained  by  the  river 
Columbia,  derived  from  priority  of  discovery  and  priority  of  occu- 
pation, are  as  yet  stronger  and  more  consistent  with  the  principles 
of  national  right  than  those  of  any  other  Power,  from  whatsoever 
source  derived.  That  those  regions  must  be  eventually  possessed 
by  the  people  of  the  United  States  only,  no  one  acquainted  with 
the  progress  of  settlement  in  the  Mississippi  Valley  during  the  last 
fifteen  years  will  be  inclined  to  question ;  but  that  Great  Britain 
will,  by  every  means  in  her  power,  evade  the  recognition  of  the 
American  claims,  and  oppose  the  establishment  of  an  American 
population  on  the  shores  of  the  Pacific,  may  be  confidently  ex- 
pected, from  the  disposition  evinced  by  her  Government  in  all  its 
recent  discussions  with  the  United  States." 

This  first  edition  of  Greenhow  is  to  be  found  bound  in  with  all  the 
other  Senate  Executive  Documents  of  the  first  session  of  the  26th 
Congress. 

Greenhow  revised  and  much  enlarged  the  book  and  in  1845  a 
second  edition  was  published  by  Little  &  Brown  of  Boston,  and 
John  Murray  of  London,  (499  pp.  with  a  map). 

From  this  later  edition  the  things  I  have  quoted  from  the  first 
edition  about  the  easy  accessibility  of  Oregon  by  wagons  over  the 
low  passes  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  the  account  of  the  first 
wagons  to  the  Rocky  Mountains  in  1830  (Greenhow  gives  the  date 
as  1829,  but  1830  is  the  correct  year),  and  the  infinite  advantages 
we  had  over  the  British  in  facilities  for  settling  Oregon  overland 
on  account  of  these  easy  passes  are  omitted,  because  the  rapid 
progress  of  events  in  developing  the  overland  wagon  road  had  made 
any  farther  publication  of  these  things  unnecessary. 

Dr.  W.  Mowry  and  Rev.  M.  Eells,  having  been  driven  by  my  criti- 
cisms to  mention  the  1840  edition,  the  following  is  the  treatment 
they  accord  to  it  (Mowry's  "Marcus  Whitman,"  p.  190)  : 

"In  1840  the  Senate  ordered  'Greenhow's  Memoir,  Historical  and 
Political,  on  the  Northwest  Coast  of  North  America,'  to  be  printed 
and  directed  that  2,500  extra  copies  should  be  struck  off  for  distri- 
bution by  the  Senate. 

"This  order  passed  the  Senate  February  10,  1840.  The  memoir 
contained  228  pages  of  valuable  information  concerning  our  title 
to  Oregon  and  concerning  the  value  of  that  country." 


210  ACQUISITION    OF   OREGON 

Not  a  wold  (Iocs  he  j)rint  about  the  New  York  and  London  edi- 
tions of  1840,  and  not  a  word  does  lie  quote  showinji;  the  ori<;in  of 
the  book,  or  about  the  position  of  its  schohirly  and  acconiplislied 
author  as  for  years  transhitor  and  librarian  of  our  State  Depart- 
ment, nor  does  ho  give  his  readers  any  idea  that  this  Government 
edition  contained  matter  of  most  vital  signitieance  concerning  and 
utterly  destructive  of  the  theory  that  our  people  as  late  as  the 
spring  of  1848  thought  Oregon  inaccessible  by  wagons.  Quite  as 
disingenuous  is  M.  l]ells'  treatment  of  the  subject. 

In  his  "Keply"  (p.  15)  he  quotes  from  Prof.  Bourne's  Legend  of 
Marcus  Whitman  the  following  sentence:  "Greenhow's  exhaustive 
history  was  being  distributed  Jis  a  public  document  early  in  1843 
(p.  85)  but  (80)  he  says  Greenhow^'s  ])reiace  was  'dated  February 
1844',"  then  Mr.  Eells  prints  the  following  footnote: 

''The  fact  was  that  the  preface  was  thus  dated,  and  the  book 
})ublished  in  1845,  but  a  smaller  edition  of  less  than  half  the  size^ 
not  the  exhaustive  history,  had  been  circulated  as  a  public  docu- 
ment." 

Not  a  word  has  Kev.  ]\L  Eells  ever  written  to  inform  his  readers 
about  this  Government  edition  of  Greenhow,  except  this  evidently 
intended  to  be  a  dis})araging  criticism  of  it,  as  '"less  than  half  the 
size"  of  the  1845  edition. 

Not  the  least  intimation  does  he  anywhere  give  of  the  pecu- 
liarity of  its  origin,  as  prepared  by  special  direction  of  the  Secre- 
tary of  State,  and  by  him  turned  over  to  a  Committee  on  Oregon 
consisting  of  Linn,  ('alhoun.  Clay  and  Franklin  Pierce,  and  by 
them  unanimously  reported  to  the  Senate,  and  unanimously 
adopted  by  the  Senate,  and  not  only  published  as  a  Government 
document,  but  immediately  published  unchanged  in  New  York  and 
London  as  a  book  for  general  sale,  and  so  furnished  not  only  in 
all  ]»;irts  of  this  country,  but  also  in  England,  more  than  three 
years  before  Whitman  could  have  reached  the  East  full  informa- 
tion as  to  the  fertility  of  soil  and  the  geniality  of  climate  of  Ore- 
gon and  its  easy  accessibility  by  wagon  from  the  States — the  very 
things  about  which  it  is  an  essential  postulate  of  the  Whitman 
Saved  Oregon  Story  that  the  people  and  the  National  Government 
were  ])rofoundly  ignorant  when  Whitman  reached  the  States  more 
than  three  years  after  this  Government  edition  of  Greenhow  was 
published.  This  is  only  one  of  scores  of  examples  in  his  "Reply" 
of  Rev.  M.  Eells'  very  curious  ideas  of  the  "candor"  and  "fairness" 
and  "earnest  search"  for  "the  truth  of  history  wherever  found" 
which  he  claims  have  animated  him  at  all  times. 

At  the  second  session  of  the  2(jth  Congress,  December  17,  1840, 
to  March  3,  1841,  nothing  was  done  about  Oregon  in  the  House  of 
Representatives. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  211 

In  the  Senate  December  31,  1840,  Linn  gave  notice  of  introduc- 
tion of  a  joint  resolution  relating  to  Oregon,  and  January  8,  1841, 
he  introduced  his  bill  for  the  occupation  of  Oregon,  which  was  re- 
ferred to  a  Special  Committee  consisting  of  Linn,  Walker,  Pierce, 
Preston  and  Sevier. 

In  the  Appendix  to  the  Congressional  Glohe  for  this  session, 
pp.  105-106,  Linn's  speech  is  given  in  full,  followed  by  copy  of 
bill  which  provides  for  a  line  of  military  posts  from  Fort  Leav- 
enworth to  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  for  donating  1,000  acres  of 
land  instead  of  640  to  every  white  male  18  years  of  age  and  up- 
wards who  will  cultivate  and  use  the  same  for  five  consecutive 
years.  "Mr.  Linn  said  that  when  this  bill  was  before  the  Senate 
for  discussion  during  the  last  and  preceding  session  of  Congress, 
his  political  friends,  as  well  as  opponents,  earnestly  pressed  him  to 
forbear  urging  the  subject  to  a  final  vote,  as  it  might  prove  em- 
barrassing at  that  time  in  the  settlement  of  the  long  pending  and 
important  question  of  the  northeastern  boundary.  ...  He  had 
been  censured  in  letters  received  from  gentlemen  residing  in  all 
parts  of  the  Union  for  not  having  pressed  his  bill  to  a  final  decis- 
ion, which  delay  was  caused  by  the  opinion  of  others  that  it  might 
be  considered  as  a  new  element  of  discord  pending  the  settlement 
of  the  northeastern  boundary." 

Twenty-seventh  Congress,  first  (or  special)  session,  May  31  to 
September  13,  1841.  In  the  Senate,  Monday,  August  2,  1841  {Con- 
gressional Glohe,  p.  276),  Mr.  King  of  Alabama  presented  petition 
of  citizens  of  Alabama  wishing  to  migrate  to  Oregon  by  way  of  the 
Isthmus  and  asking  that  arrangements  may  be  made  by  the  Gov- 
ernment to  protect  them  under  the  laws  of  the  LTnited  States  when 
they  reach  there. 

"Mr.  King  said  many  of  the  memorialists  were  personally  known 
to  him  and  were  men  of  worth," 

On  same  day  {Gloie,  p.  278,)  Mr.  Linn  submitted  a  resolution 
on  Oregon  as  follows :  "Resolved,  that  the  President  of  the  United 
States  be  requested  to  give  the  notice  to  the  British  Government 
which  the  treaty  of  1827  between  the  two  Governments  requires  in 
order  to  put  an  end  to  the  treaty  for  the  joint  occupation  of  the 
territory  of  Oregon  west  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  which  ter- 
ritory is  now  possessed  and  used  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  the 
ruin  of  the  American  Indian  and  fur  trade  in  that  quarter,  and 
conflicting  with  our  inland  commerce  with  the  internal  provinces 
of  Mexico." 

This  resolution  was  discussed  briefly  by  Linn,  Benton,  Sevier 
and  Preston,  August  12,  (Globe,  p.  325,)  and  by  Benton  during  the 
whole  morning  August  17,  (Glohe,  p.  341,)  and,  on  August  21,  after 
being  amended  so  as  to  direct  the  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations 


212  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

to  inquire  into  the  expediency  of  requesting  the  President  to  give 
the  notice,  the  amended  resolution  was  referred  to  the  Foreign  He- 
hitions  Committee. 

Second  session  of  27th  Congress,  December  G,  1811,  to  August 
31,  1842.  President  Tyler  in  his  Message  at  the  beginning  of  this 
session  said  (speaking  of  the  report  of  John  C.  Spencer,  Secretary 
of  War),  ''I  recommend  i)articularly  to  your  consideration  that 
portion  of  the  Secretary's  report  which  proposes  the  establishment 
of  a  chain  of  military  posts  from  Council  Bluffs  to  some  point  on 
the  Pacific  Ocean  within  our  limits.  The  benefits  thereby  destined 
to  accrue  to  our  citizens  engaged  in  the  fur  trade  over  that  wil- 
derness region,  added  to  the  importance  of  cultivating  friendly  re- 
lations with  savage  tribes  inhabiting  it,  and,  at  the  same  time,  of 
giving  protection  to  our  frontier  settlements,  and  of  establishing 
the  means  of  safe  intercourse  between  the  American  settlements 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  River  and  those  on  this  side  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  would  seem  to  suggest  the  importance  of  carry- 
ing into  effect  the  recommendations  upon  this  head  with  as  little 
delay  as  may  be  practicable." 

Only  ten  days  later,  December  IG,  1841,  Linn  introduced  his 
bill  for  the  occupation  and  settlement  of  Oregon,  and  the  granting 
of  land  to  settlers  there,  and  it  was  referred  to  a  special  committee 
of  five.     {Congressional  Glohe,  p.  22.) 

April  13  and  15.  Linn  spoke  at  length  on  the  bill,  and  said: 
''There  could  be  no  dispute  about  the  right  of  the  United  States  to 
all  the  region  south  of  the  Columbia  River,  a  right  which  Great 
Britain  had  fully  conceded.  The  only  question  was  as  to  the  right 
of  the  United  States  to  the  territory  north  of  the  Columbia  River." 
{Congressional  Glohe,  p.  426.) 

August  3,  1842.  Linn  said :  "Besides  this  bundle  of  memorials 
praying  (Congress  to  take  ste})s  to  assert  our  title  to  the  Territory 
and  to  enact  measures  to  encourage  emigration,  he  said  the  Leg- 
islatures of  two  or  three  States  had  passed  resolutions  asking  Con- 
gress to  assert  our  rights  to  the  country  we  claimed  on  the  Western 
Ocean,  and  to  take  such  steps  as  the  urgency  of  the  case  seemed 
to  demand.  He  had  also  in  his  possession  hundreds  upon  hundreds 
of  letters,  from  every  quarter  of  the  Union,  making  anxious  inquir- 
ies as  to  what  was  likely  to  be  done  by  Congress  relative  to  this 
long  agitated  and  long  deferred  question."  {Congn'ssionul  Glohe, 
p.  33G.) 

August  31,  1842.  Linn  made  a  long  speech  on  his  Oregon  bill 
(l)rinted  in  full  in  Appendix  to  Congressional  Glohe,  27th  Cong.,  2d 
Sess.,  p.  73G),  in  which  he  said:  "The  ]>reamble  to  the  bill  reads 
thus:  'Whereas,  the  title  of  the  United  States  to  the  Territory  of 
Oregon  is  certain  and  will    not  be  abandoned.'     This  declaration 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  213 

was  important  to  the  citizens  of  the  United  States  who  reside  in 
the  Territory,  now  amounting  to  1,500  or  2,000  persons.  To  many 
on  the  road  to  tlie  Territory  and  to  thousands  who  were  preparing 
to  move  to  that  region  it  was  an  assurance  that  although  upon  the 
extremest  verge  of  this  republic  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  would  not  abandon  them  to  any  foreign  power.     .     .     . 

"Hitherto  the  British  Government  —  or  rather  its  agents,  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co. — have  had  unlimited  control  over  the  Territory 
and  its  resources. 

''The  committee  unanimously  instructed  their  chairman  to  re- 
port this  bill  back  to  the  Senate  with  the  recommendation  that  it 
pass.  It  was  then  placed  in  its  order  on  the  calendar,  but  before 
it  came  up  for  consideration  as  a  special  order  Lord  Ashburton 
arrived  from  England  to  enter  upon  a  negotiation  touching  all 
points  of  dispute  between  the  two  countries — boundaries  as  well  as 
others — Oregon  as  well  as  Maine. 

"In  that  posture  of  affairs  it  was  considered  on  all  hands  in- 
delicate (not  to  say  unwise)  to  press  the  bill  to  a  decision  whilst 
these  negotiations  were  pending.  They  are  now  over,  and  a  treaty 
is  published  to  the  world  in  which  it  seems  that  the  question  of  the 
Oregon  Territory  has  been  referred  to  some  more  remote  or  auspi- 
cious period  for  ultimate  decision.  He  said  he  was  confident  that 
there  were  majorities  in  both  Houses  of  Congress  in  favor  of  this 
bill ;  and  he  felt  equally  certain  that  it  would  have  passed  this  ses- 
sion but  for  the  arrival  of  Lord  Ashburton,  and  the  pending  of  the 
negotiations  which  terminated  a  short  period  since.  He  would 
deem  it  his  imperative  duty  at  an  early  day  of  the  coming  session 
to  bring  in  the  same  bill  and  press  it  to  a  final  decision." 

At  this  session  there  was  no  debate  on  Oregon  in  the  House 
of  Representatives,  but  on  May  31,  1842,  the  Military  Committee 
of  the  House,  to  whom  had  been  referred  so  much  of  the  President's 
Message  as  relates  to  the  establishment  of  a  chain  of  military  posts 
from  Council  Bluffs  to  the  Pacific  Coast,  submitted  a  report  cover- 
ing 64  pages,  with  the  "Ultimatum  Map,"  of  which  5,000  copies 
"besides  the  usual  number"  were  ordered  printed. 

It  is  No.  830,  Reports  of  Committees,  House  of  Representatives, 
27th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  and  is  commonly  called  Pendleton's  first  Re- 
port— N.  G.  Pendleton  of  Ohio  being  chairman  of  the  committee. 

The  first  24  pages  contain  a  statement  of  the  voyages  of  dis- 
covery of  Spanish  and  British  navigators  and  our  seamen  along  the 
northwest  coast  of  America  and  the  origin  and  grounds  of  our 
claims  to  Oregon. 

Of  Lieut.  Charles  Wilkes'  explorations  of  Oregon  (April  to  Oc- 
tober, 1841),  this  report  says  (p.  24):  "The  report  of  Lieut. 
Wilkes,  based  upon  actual  observation  and  surveys  by  competent 


214  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

oflScers,  will  certainly  give  more  recent,  probably  more  accurate, 
information  than  any  now  within  reach  of  the  committee  upon 
the  several  jjoints  involved  in  this  inquiry.  In  the  mean  time,  the 
committee  presents  for  the  consideration  of  the  House  the  follow- 
ing: geographical  and  statistical  account,  selected  and  abridged 
from  the  Memoirs  of  Messrs.  Wyeth,  Slacum,  Kelly  and  Greenhow. 
The  three  former  gentlemen  visited  the  territory  and  give  us  the 
results  of  their  own  observations  in  clear  and  concise  narratives. 
As  their  observations  were  made  at  dilferent  periods,  and  their  ac- 
counts prepared  without  concert,  we  may  with  great  confidence  re- 
ceive and  act  upon  those  facts  and  opinions  wherein  they  agree. 
The  ])oints  of  difference  between  them  on  matters  of  importance 
are  very  few,  and  these  will  be  noted  as  they  occur.  Mr.  Oreenhow's 
Memoir  carries  internal  evidence  of  the  diligence  and  fidelity  with 
which  he  performed  the  duty  assigned  to  him." 

T'ndonblcdly  had  this  committee  expected  that  Lieut.  Wilkes' 
fleet  would  drop  anchor  in  New  York  harbor  on  June  10,  1842,  and 
that  June  13,  1842  (only  two  weeks  after  this  report  was  presented 
to  the  House  of  Representatives),  Lieut.  Wilkes  would  file  in  the 
Nav}'  Department  his  very  enthusiastic  ''Special  Report"  on  Ore- 
gon, they  would  have  held  back  this  report  till  they  could  have  in- 
corporated in  it  the  essential  parts  of  that  ''Special  Report"  of 
Wilkes,  as  they  did  in  a  second  edition  of  this  report  in  January, 
]848. 

The  rest  of  the  report  to  p.  o()  is  filled  with  this  "Account  com- 
piled from  Wyeth,  Kelly,  Slacum  and  Greenhow,"  and  with  sta- 
tistics about  the  whale  fishery — then  a  very  important  industry  in 
the  North  Pacific — and  with  letters  from  the  Secretary  of  War, 
J.  J.  Abert,  Colonel  of  Corps  of  Topographical  Engineers,  and  J. 
G.  Totten,  Colonel  and  Chief  Engineer,  and  N.  Towson,  Paymaster 
General,  and  George  Gibson,  Commissary  General  of  Subsistence, 
as  to  cost,  etc.,  of  establishing  and  maintaining  a  line  of  mili- 
tary posts  to  the  Pacific,  and  a  draft  of  a  bill  for  the  establishing 
of  such  posts. 

This  is  followed  by  an  Appendix  consisting  of  six  pages  of 
Extracts  from  the  Journal  of  Capt.  Spaulding  of  the  ship  Lau- 
sanne, which  carried  out  the  great  reinforcement  to  the  Methodist 
Mission  in  1839-40  (upon  which  I  shall  comment  in  the  next  chap- 
ter) ;  and  a  letter  from  Mr.  H.  A.  Pierce,  of  Boston,  to  Senator 
Linn,  dated  May  1,  1842;  and  a  letter  from  Thomas  E.  Bond,  Secre- 
tary of  the  Methodist  Missionary  Society,  dated  New  York,  Janu- 
ary 22,  1842,  in  which  he  wrote  (p.  63)  :  "I  fear  we  are  not  pos- 
sessed of  any  information  that  will  be  of  any  material  use  to  your 
committee."  "The  mission  families  now  contain  some  (58  ])ersons, 
men,  women  and  children;  but  a  considerable  proportion  are  not 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  215 

of  the  ministry  proper,  and  are  employed  in  mechanical  and  agri- 
cultural labors  necessary  to  the  mission.  .  .  ."  (p.  64).  He  then 
gives  a  brief  statement  of  the  stations  occupied  by  the  mission,  but 
it  furnishes  no  information  not  already  well  known  to  the  public 
and  the  Government,  and  continues : 

"It  will  occur  to  you  and  to  the  committee,  that  missionaries 
among  savages,  so  far  from  home,  and  at  a  point  from  which  they 
have  so  few  opportunities  to  write  to  their  friends  or  to  their 
church  authorities,  would  not  be  likely  to  deal  in  statistics,  fur- 
ther than  immediately  connected  with  the  duties  assigned  them ; 
and  hence,  as  we  have  not  directed  their  attention  to  the  country 
with  any  political  or  commercial  objects,  we  would  not  be  likely  to 
come  into  possession  of  much  information  on  such  subjects.  They 
all  agree  in  representing  the  Indian  tribes  inhabiting  the  country 
as  far  more  degraded  and  destitute  than  those  in  our  borders ;  yet 
nowhere  have  our  missionary  efforts  among  savages  been  more  suc- 
cessful. Indeed,  the  very  misery  of  these  people  seconds  the  preach- 
ing and  advice  of  the  missionaries." 

Yet  only  two  years  after  the  date  of  this  letter,  this  mission, 
which  Mr.  Bond  declared  to  be  among  the  most  successful  they  had 
ever  established  among  savages,  was  abandoned.  He  concludes 
with,  "I  am  sorry  I  can  be  of  so  little  use  to  the  committee ;  but 
any  inquiries  which  you  may  suggest  I  will  forward  to  the  mis- 
sionaries in  Oregon,  who  I  am  sure  will  readily  furnish  the  Gov- 
ernment with  any  information  in  their  power,  and  which  might 
be  useful  on  a  subsequent  occasion." 

Having  written  this  letter,  which  contains  absolutely  nothing 
of  the  slightest  importance  about  Oregon  which  was  not  already 
well  known  to  the  Government,  and  to  the  public — he  held  it  till 
April  11,  1842,  and  then  enclosed  it  with  the  following  brief  note: 

"New  York,  April  11,  1842. 

"Sir:  I  have  delayed  to  return  the  enclosed  letter,  with  the  ex- 
pectation of  being  able  to  add  to  it  some  important  information 
from  Oregon ;  but  our  latest  despatches  from  Mr.  Lee  afford  noth- 
ing which  could  be  of  use  to  you.  I  regret  that  my  letter  is  so  de- 
fective; but  such  as  it  is,  you  are  authorized  to  make  such  use  of 
it  as  you  may  think  proper. 

"I  am,  Sir,  very  respectfully,  your  obedient  servant, 

"THOMAS  E.  BOND. 
"Hon.  N.  G.  Pendleton." 

Neither  in  this,  nor  any  other  committee  report  about  Oregon 
while  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  Mission  to  Oregon  existed,  was  there  any 
intimation  that  any  member  of  any  such  committee  had  sought  for 


216  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

or  received  any  information  from  any  official  of  the  American 
Board  about  anytliinj;  in  ()re}i(m,  or  had  received  from  Marcus 
Wliitnian  or  any  other  of  the  American  Board  missionaries  there 
any  information  that  in  the  least  degree  affected  the  political  des- 
tinies of  any  part  of  the  Oregon  Territory. 

The  Ashburton  treaty  was  negotiated  and  ratified  during  this 
second  session  of  the  27tli  Congress. 

The  letter  of  Edw.  Everett,  our  Minister  to  England,  to  D, 
Webster,  Secretary  of  State,  announcing  the  appointment  of  Lord 
Ashburton  as  Special  Plenipotentiary  was  dated  London,  Decem- 
ber 31,  1841.  Ashburton  arrived  April  4,  1S42  (Cf.  Webster's 
Works,  Vol.  v.,  p.  98). 

Informal  negotiations  went  on  till  June  13,  1842  (the  very  day 
Lieut.  Wilkes  filed  his  Special  Report  on  Oregon  in  the  Navy  De- 
partment), when  a  letter  from  Ashburton  to  Webster  opened  the 
formal  negotiations,  which  eventuated,  August  9,  1842,  in  the  sign- 
ing of  the  Treaty  of  Washington,  or  the  Webster- Ashburton  Treaty, 
which  was  submitted  to  the  Senate  August  11,  1842,  by  President 
Tyler  with  a  message  which  was  written  by  Secretary  D.  Webster, 
(Cf.  on  this,  note  on  p.  347,  Vol.  VII.,  Webster's  Works.) 

The  treaty  was  debated  very  vigorously,  Benton  offering  four 
amendments,  which  were  rejected  by  votes  of  more  than  3  to  1,  and 
on  August  20,  1842,  it  was  ratified  by  39  to  9;  the  full  membership 
of  the  Senate  being  50.  Yet  Prof.  H.  W.  Parker,  D.  D.,  in  Homi- 
lectic  Review  for  July,  1901,  in  an  article  designed  to  bolster  up  the 
Whitman  Legend  on  "How  Oregon  was  Saved  to  the  United 
States,"  says:  ''Daniel  Webster  was  no  fool.  His  unpopular  Ash- 
burton treaty  of  1842  must  have  quickened  his  caution." 

Certainly  we  ought  to  be  thankful  to  the  Rev.  Doctor  for  mod- 
estly announcing  \o  the  world  that  "Daniel  Webster  was  no  fool," 
and  that  "The  Ashburton  Treaty  was  unpopular." 

They  are  both  as  important,  and  the  last  one  as  trustworthy,  as 
any  and  everything  else  in  the  article  in  which  they  appear. 

The  injunction  of  secrecy  on  the  Senate's  action  on  this  treaty 
was  removed  by  vote  of  the  Senate,  and  the  whole  published  in  the 
Congressional  Globe,  27  Cong.,  3d  Sess. — the  general  report  at 
the  beginning  of  the  volume  and  the  leading  speeches  in  the  Ap- 
pendix. 

Both  Benton  and  Buchanan  opposed  its  ratification  and  de- 
nounced it  with  special  bitterness  because  of  its  failure  to  include 
the  Oregon  boundary. 

Ashburton  came  over  with  "specific  and  detailed  instructions" 
to  treat  on  the  Oregon  boundary,  as  well  as  the  other  subjects  of 
difterence  between  the  two  Governments,  and  this  fact  was  pub- 
lished by  our  (lovernment  as  early  as  December,  1845  (Cf.  p.  139  of 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  217 

Ex.  Doc.  No.  2,  29th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  being  correspondence  accom- 
panying President  Polk's  Annual  Message),  yet  Barrows — with  his 
usual  ignorance  of  everything  of  any  real  importance  about  the  di- 
plomacy of  the  Oregon  question — declares  twice  that  Ashburton 
was  not  authorized  to  treat  on  the  Oregon  boundary,  and  this  has 
been  copied  by  some  of  the  really  able  historians  who  have  ac- 
cepted Barrows  for  an  authority;  thus  Prof.  J.  W.  Burgess,  in 
Chapter  XIV.  of  his  ''Middle  Period,"  says :  ''Mr.  Webster  sounded 
Lord  Ashburton  on  the  Oregon  question  and  found  that  the  Queen's 
agent  had  received  no  power  to  deal  with  the  matter." 

(Cf.  Barrows'  ''Oregon,"  p.  185)  "Indeed,  the  two  negotiators 
had  paused  at  the  Rocky  Mountains,  because,  as  the  President 
stated,  any  attempts  to  carry  the  line  farther  would  not  offer  hope- 
ful results.  It  does  not  appear,  moreover,  that  the  Secretary  was 
under  any  executive  instructions  to  go  into  the  Pacific  side  of  the 
business,  and  certainly  Lord  Ashburton  was  not." 

(Ibid.  pp.  232-3)  "First,  Oregon  was  not  a  matter  of  negotia- 
tion between  Ashburton  and  Webster.  .  .  .  Indeed,  Lord  Ash- 
burton was  not  prepared,  by  his  papers  of  instruction,  to  take  up 
the  question  and  was  not  authorized  to  do  it." 

What  these  specific  and  detailed  instructions  were,  and  why  the 
Oregon  boundary  was  not  made  a  subject  of  negotiation,  and  Web- 
ster's determined  stand  for  49  degrees  to  the  Pacific,  and  the  utter 
demolition  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Legend  resulting  from 
a  statement  of  these  facts,  will  appear  a  little  later  in  considering 
the  action  of  the  third  session  of  the  27th  Congress. 

Third  session,  27th  Congress,  December  5,  1842,  to  March  4, 
1843.  President  Tyler's  second  Annual  Message,  sent  to  this  ses- 
sion of  Congress  December  7,  1842,  says:  "It  would  have  fur- 
nished additional  cause  for  congratulation  if  the  treaty  could  have 
embraced  all  subjects  calculated  in  future  to  lead  to  a  misunder- 
standing between  the  two  Governments. 

"The  territory  of  the  United  States  commonly  called  the  Ore- 
gon Territory,  lying  on  the  Pacific  Ocean  north  of  the  42d  degree 
of  latitude,  to  a  portion  of  which  Great  Britain  lays  claim,  begins 
to  attract  the  attention  of  our  fellow  citizens ;  and  the  tide  of  popu- 
lation which  has  reclaimed  what  was  so  lately  an  unbroken  wilder- 
ness in  more  contiguous  regions  is  preparing  to  flow  over  those  vast 
districts  which  stretch  from  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Pacific 
Ocean.  In  advance  of  the  acquirement  of  individual  rights  to  these 
lands,  sound  policy  dictates  that  every  effort  should  be  resorted  to 
by  the  two  Governments  to  settle  their  respective  claims. 

"It  became  manifest  at  an  early  hour  of  the  late  negotiations 
that  any  attempt,  for  the  time  being,  satisfactorily  to  determine 
those  rights  would  lead  to  a  protracted  discussion,  which  might 


218  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

embrace  in  its  failure  other  more  pressinp:  matters,  and  the  Execu- 
tive (lid  not  rejiard  it  as  proper  to  waive  all  the  advantajjes  of  an 
honorable  adjustment  of  other  difliculties  of  p-eat  nia<;nitude  and 
importance  because  this  not  so  immediately  pressing  stood  in  the 
way. 

''Altlionfrh  the  difficulty  referred  to  may  not  for  several  years 
to  come  involve  Iho  peace  of  the  two  countries,  yet  T  shall  not 
delay  to  urge  on  (Jreat  Britain  the  importance  of  its  early  settle- 
ment." 

December  22,  1842,  the  Senate  passed  Linn's  resolution  calling 
on  the  President  for  the  ''informal  communications"  between  Web- 
ster and  Ashburton  on  the  Oregon  boundary  and  the  reasons  why 
that  subject  was  not  included  in  the  Ashburton  treaty. 

To  this  the  President  replied  as  follows,  in  a  message  dated 
December  23,  1842 : 

"To  the  Senate  of  the  Ignited  States:  I  have  received  the  reso- 
lution of  the  22d  inst.,  requesting  me  to  inform  the  Senate  of  the 
nature  and  extent  of  the  informal  communications  which  took 
place  between  the  American  Secretary  of  State  and  the  British 
Special  Minister,  during  the  late  negotiations  in  Washington  City 
upon  the  subject  of  the  claims  of  the  Ignited  States  and  Great 
Britain  to  the  territory  west  of  the  Bocky  Mountains;  and  also  to 
inform  the  Senate  what  were  the  reasons  which  prevented  any 
agreement  upon  the  subject  at  present,  and  which  made  it  expe- 
dient (query,  inexpedient?)  to  include  this  subject  among  the 
subjects  of  formal  negotiation. 

"In  my  message  to  Congress  at  the  commencement  of  the  pres- 
ent session,  in  adverting  to  the  territory  of  the  United  States  on 
the  Pacific  Ocean  north  of  the  42d  degree  of  north  latitude,  a  part 
of  which  is  claimed  by  Great  Britain,  I  remarked  that,  in  advance 
of  the  acquirement  of  individual  right  to  these  lands,  sound  policy 
dictated  that  every  effort  should  be  resorted  to  by  the  two  Gov- 
ernments to  settle  their  respective  claims;  and  also  stated  that  I 
should  not  delay  to  urge  on  Great  Britain  the  importance  of  an 
early  settlement. 

''Measures  have  been  already  taken,  in  ])ursuance  of  the  ])ur])Ose 
thus  exjtressed,  and  under  the  circumstances  I  do  not  deem  it  con- 
sistent with  the  public  interest  to  make  any  communication  on  the 
subject." 

Forthwith  Benton,  (in  the  great  debate  on  Linn's  Oregon  bill, 
which  began  in  December,  1842,  and  ended  February  3,  1848,  by 
the  ])assage  of  the  bill  in  the  Senate  by  24  to  22,)  denounced  Tyler 
and  Webster,  and  declared  that  the  President's  refusal  to  furnish 
the  Senate  with  the  report  of  the  informal  communications  with 
Ashburton  on  the  Oregon  boundary,  and  the  reasons  why  it  was 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  219 

not  deemed  wise  to  attempt  to  include  that  subject  in  the  Ashbur- 
ton  treaty,  was  because  its  disclosure  would  disgrace  the  Admin- 
istration, by  showing  that  the  President  and  his  Secretary  ot  State 
were  recreant  to  our  national  interests  and  ready  to  sacrifice  our 
national  honor  on  the  question  of  the  Oregon  boundary,  and  were 
willing  to  yield — not  all  of  Oregon,  for  even  Benton  dared  not 
claim  that — but  that  part  north  and  west  of  the  Columbia,  by 
making  the  Columbia  the  boundary  line,  instead  of  49  degrees  to 
the  Pacific. 

Undoubtedly  vague  recollections  of  newspaper  accounts  of  this 
wholly  unwarranted  accusation  of  Benton  against  Webster  and 
Tyler  suggested  to  Spalding's  unbalanced  and  naturally  very  imag- 
inative mind  the  basis  on  which  he  built  up  his  mythical  account 
of  the  interview  of  Marcus  Whitman  with  Webster  and  Tyler. 

To  Benton's  baseless  partisan  accusation  the  President  could 
not  with  propriety  reply,  nor  could  Webster  answer  it  in  person 
on  the  floor  of  the  Senate,  but  fortunately  for  the  establishment  of 
the  truth  of  history  in  this  matter  he  found  a  way  to  crush  this 
slander  into  the  dust  of  oblivion,  where  it  remained  forgotten  of 
men  till  23  years  afterward  Spalding  and  Gray  resurrected  it  to 
support  the  "Whitman  Saved  Oregon"  story.  If  the  reader  will 
turn  to  the  Congressional  Globe,  27th  Congress,  3d  Session,  he  will 
find  in  the  Senate  Proceedings  for  W^ednesday,  January  18,  1843, 
pp.  171  and  172,  a  speech  by  Senator  Choate  on  the  Oregon  Terri- 
tory, and  in  it  on  p.  172,  first  column,  occurs  the  following:  "In 
commenting  upon  the  speech  of  the  Senator  from  Missouri  (Mr. 
Benton),  who  had  preceded  him  in  the  discussion  when  the  subject 
was  last  up,  he  took  occasion  to  remove  an  erroneous  impression 
which  he  conceived  was  calculated  to  do  great  injustice  to  a  dis- 
tinguished man  (Mr.  Webster)  who  could  not  there  defend  him- 
self. He  alluded  to  the  fears  expressed  by  the  Senator  from  Mis- 
souri that  the  President's  message  declining  to  furnish  the  corre- 
spondence or  informal  communications  relative  to  the  pending  ne- 
gotiation about  the  Oregon  Territory  implied  grounds  for  conclud- 
ing that  propositions  had  been  made  by  our  Secretary  of  State 
which  the  Administration  was  ashamed  or  afraid  to  avow;  that, 
in  fact,  the  rumor  must  be  correct  which  had  got  abroad  that  a 
proposition  had  been  made  or  entertained,  by  the  Secretary  of 
State,  to  settle  down  upon  the  Columbia  River  as  the  boundary 
line.  Now,  he  was  glad  to  have  it  in  his  power  to  undeceive  the 
Senator,  and  to  assure  him,  which  he  did  from  authority — for  he 
had  been  requested  by  the  Secretary  himself  to  do  it  for  him — that 
he  never  either  made  or  entertained  a  proposition  to  admit  of  any 
line  south  of  the  49th  parallel  of  latitude  as  a  negotiable  boundary 
line  for  the  territory  of  the  United  States.     After  Mr.  Choate  had 


220  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

cousiderably  more  at  lar^e  aud  iu  his  owu  words  (the  purpose  of 
which  it  is  only  attempted  to  give  in  this  sketch)  fully  explained 
this  matter,  he  next  turned  to  so  much  of  the  remarks  of  the  Sena- 
tor from  Missouri  as  condemned  the  late  treaty  with  Great  Britain 
in  relation  to  the  northeastern  boundary  line." 

Ihid,  A])pendix,  pp.  222-229,  contains  a  verbatim  report  of  an- 
other speech  by  Choate  delivered  February  'A,  1S4.S,  and  on  p.  223, 
8d  column,  he  says:  "I  desired  chiefly  to  assure  the  Senator  and 
the  Senate  that  the  ai>])rehension  intimated  by  him  that  a  dis- 
closure of  these  informal  communications  would  disgrace  the  Amer- 
ican Secretary,  by  showing  that  he  had  offered  a  boundary  line 
south  of  the  parallel  of  49,  is  totally  unfounded.  He  would  be  glad 
to  hear  me  say  that  I  am  authorized  and  desired  to  declare  that 
in  no  communication,  formal  or  informal,  was  such  an  offer  made, 
and  that  none  such  was  ever  meditated." 

As  we  have  seen,  the  fact  that  Ashburton  came  over  with  '"spe- 
cific and  detailed  instructions"  to  treat  on  Oregon  was  declared 
by  Lord  Aberdeen,  head  of  the  British  Foreign  Office,  in  a  letter 
to  Mr.  H.  S.  Fox,  British  Minister  at  Washington,  published  by 
our  Government  among  the  documents  accompanying  President 
Polk's  first  Annual  Message,  but  precisely  why  Oregon  was  not 
included  in  the  Ashburton  treaty  could  not  be  stated  with  due  re- 
gard to  the  di]>lomatic  proprieties,  either  by  Choate  in  1843,  or 
Webster  in  his  great  speech  in  defense  of  the  Ashburton  treaty  in 
1846,  nor  (in  1851)  by  Everett,  his  life-long  friend  (and  our  Min- 
ister to  England  in  Tyler's  Administration),  in  his  brief  biography 
of  Webster,  in  which  all  he  says  on  this  point  is,  ''Had  he  sup- 
posed an  arrangement  could  have  been  effected  on  this  basis"  (/.  e., 
49th  degree  to  the  coast)  "with  Lord  Ashburton,  he  would  gladly 
have  included  it  in  the  treaty  of  Washington"  (Cf.  Webster's 
Works,  Vol.  I.,  Intro.,  p.  148),  because  Ashburton 's  instructions 
from  the  British  Foreign  Office  were  not  published  till  1871-2  (in 
Berlin  Arbitration,  pp.  218-19).  These  instructions  directed  Ash- 
burton to  offer  us:  (1st)  The  line  of  the  Columbia  River  from  its 
mouth  to  the  Snake  River,  and  thence  due  east  to  the  summit  of 
the  Rockies.  This  w^ould  have  given  us  about  nine-fourteenths  of 
the  territory  south  of  49  degrees.  If  he  could  not  secure  that  line 
he  was  authorized  (2d)  to  renew  the  offer  made  us  in  1824,  and 
again  in  1827  by  England,  of  the  line  of  49  degrees  from  the  sum- 
mit of  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  most  northeastern  branch  of  the 
Columbia,  and  thence  the  river  to  the  Pacific.  (3d)  If  he  could 
not  secure  this  line  (which  would  have  surrendered  to  us  consider- 
ably more  than  four-fifths  of  all  the  territory  south  of  49  degrees), 
he  was  positively  forbidden  to  accept  of  the  line  of,  49  degrees  to 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  221 

the  coast,  which  we  had  always  insisted  upon,  and  as  early  as  1826 
had  announced  to  England  as  "our  ultimatum." 

Until  the  writer  found  these  "specific  and  detailed  instructions" 
to  Lord  Ashburton  he  often  wondered  why  Webster  did  not  "au- 
thorize and  request  Choate  to  say  that  no  proposition  for  a  line 
south  of  49  degrees"  had  been  received  by  him,  but  as  soon  as  these 
instructions  were  found  it  was  evident  why  "received"  was  not 
used.  Nothing  is  plainer  than  that  in  those  informal  communica- 
tions Ashburton  proposed  one  or  both  of  the  lines  he  was  author^ 
ized  to  offer,  and  when  Webster  met  the  propositions  with  the 
offer  of  our  "ultimatum  of  1826,"  Ashburton  informed  him  that  his 
instructions  would  not  allow  him  to  accept  that  line,  and  so  they 
attempted  no  formal  negotiations  on  Oregon,  though  both  of  them 
would  gladly  have  settled  it  if  it  had  been  possible.  Webster  there- 
fore could  not  truthfully  say  that  no  such  proposition  had  been 
"received,"  but  only  that  he  had  not  made,  nor  entertained,  nor 
meditated,  any  proposition  to  admit  any  line  south  of  49  degrees 
as  a  negotiable  line  for  the  United  States. 

In  view  of  the  fact  that  these  explicit  statements  of  Webster's 
inflexible  adherence  to  our  "ultimatum"  of  49  degrees  to  the  Pa- 
cific were  made  when  Whitman  (of  whose  existence  even  there  is 
no  evidence  that  Webster  or  Tyler  were  then  aware)  was  riding 
over  the  prairies  of  what  is  now  Kansas,  what  becomes  of  that 
fundamental  postulate  of  the  "Whitman  Saved  Oregon"  fiction  that 
Webster  was  ready  to  trade  off  Oregon  on  account  of  his  deplor- 
able ignorance  about  it,  when  that  great  patriotic  hero,  Marcus 
Whitman,  arrived  in  the  nick  of  time  to  dispel  the  ignorance  and 
save  Oregon,  Barrows  assuring  us  (p.  188)  that  "If  Dr.  Whitman 
could  have  created  all  the  circumstances  and  ordained  his  own 
time,  his  arrival  in  Washington  could  not  have  been  more  apt  for 
seizing  the  conditions  of  things  and  saving  Oregon.  Its  destiny 
he  had  brought  over  on  his  own  saddle,  and  now  held  it  in  his  soli- 
tary hand."  Such  stilly  stuff  do  alleged  historians  write  when 
instead  of  studying  contemporaneous  authorities  to  know  the  truth 
they  evolve  what  they  call  history  from  their  imaginations! 

Choate's  statements  which  he  was  "authorized  and  requested 
to  make  by  Webster"  agree  exactly  with  all  Webster's  subsequent 
course  on  the  Oregon  question,  as  hereinafter  stated. 

Benton  on  this  as  on  many  another  occasion  could  not  refrain 
from  making  unwarranted  accusations  against  the  British  in  gen- 
eral and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  particular,  and  as  was  his  Avont, 
being  from  Missouri — a  State  which  in  the  event  of  a  war  with 
England  was  by  its  geographical  position  secure  against  any  Eng- 
lish army  getting  anywhere  near  its  borders — he  made  light  of  any 
possibility  of  injury  to  us  if  war  should  result  from  our  wantonly 


L'L'L*  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

and  inexcusably  breaking;  the  treaty  of  1827,  and  "made  the  Eagle 
scream"  after  the  following  fashion : 

"No  one  defended  the  title  of  the  British  to  one  inch  square  of 
the  valley  of  the  Oregon.  .  .  .  He  undertook  to  show  that  their 
possession  of  the  valley  of  the  Columbia  was  intrustive  and  tor- 
tious; a  trespass  and  a  fraud  upon  our  pre-existing  possession  of 
the  same  river;  and  a  wrong  and  aggression  which  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  T'nited  Stales  should  resist  and  i-epulse.  .  .  .  And 
now  what  has  been  the  conduct  of  the  British  under  this  article? 
(i.  e.,  the  3d  article  of  the  treaties  of  1818  and  1827.) 

"They  have  crossed  the  4()th  degree,  come  down  upon  the  To- 
lunibia,  taken  possession  of  it  from  the  head  to  the  mouth,  fortified 
it  and  colonized  it,  monopolized  the  fur  trade,  driven  all  our 
traders  across  the  mountains,  killed  more  than  a  thousand  of  them 
(by  their  Indians)  and  used  the  Columbia  as  a  free  port,  through 
which  they  bring  goods  free  of  duty  into  our  territories,  up  into 
the  Kocky  Mountains,  and  across  them.  This  is  what  they  have 
done  by  their  agent,  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  In  its  own  name,  and 
by  an  Act  of  I'arliament  immediately  after  the  Convention,  the 
British  Government  has  extended  its  jurisdiction  over  the  whole 
country,  taking  no  notice  at  all  of  our  claims,  and  subjecting  all 
our  citizens  and  their  property  to  British  judges,  British  courts 
and  appeals  to  Canada.  .  .  .  They  have  taken  possession  of 
our  claimed  territory,  of  our  harbor,  our  river,  colonized  the  coun- 
try and  killed  and  expelled  our  traders.  .  .  .  Our  traders,  left 
to  contend  single-handed  against  the  organized  Hudson's  Bay  Co., 
against  their  Indians,  against  their  free  goods,  have  all  been  driven 
in — forced  not  only  out  of  the  valley  of  the  Columbia,  but  out  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  ruin  has  overtaken  many  of  them.  Even 
the  strong  and  rich  company  of  Mr.  Choteau  can  no  longer  ap- 
proach the  Kocky  Mountains.  The  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  are  the  mas- 
ters there.  Every  American  that  ay)proaches  that  region  does  so 
at  the  peril  of  his  life.  Many  were  killed  there  this  summer.  .  . 
and  now,  if  after  all  this,  any  proposition  has  been  made  by  our 
Government  to  give  u])  the  north  bank  of  the  Columbia,  I  for  one 
shall  not  fail  to  brand  such  a  proposition  with  the  name  of  treason. 
.  .  .  We  fear  war!  As  if  the  fear  of  war  ever  kept  if  ofif.  We 
fear  war  while  Great  Britain  is  systematically  preparing  for  war 
with  us.  All  her  encroachments  upon  us  show  that  she  is  prepar- 
ing for  this  result.  She  is  ])re])aring  for  war,  and  the  late  treaty 
(the  Ashburton  treaty)  is  the  largest  of  her  preparations.  .  .  . 
As  a  nation  Great  Britain  despises  and  hates  our  nation.  .  .  . 
There  may  be  individual  Englishmen  who  have  regard  for  indi- 
vidual Americans,  but  as  it  concerns  nation  and  nation  they 
despise  and  hate  us!    They  want  war  with  us,  and  count  upon  its 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  223 

being  short  and  triumphant.  .  .  .  We  should  count  upon  ex- 
pelling them  from  our  continent,  giving  freedom  to  Ireland  and 
aiding  the  English  people  to  reform  their  government.  .  .  . 
Sooner  or  later  the  war  will  come,  for  Great  Britain  is  determined 
upon  it,  and  we  should  roll  back  the  thunder  upon  her  own  shores. 

^'Thirty  thousand  friends  of  Ireland  landed  on  her  coast,  and 
forming  the  rallying  point  for  a  million  of  patriots,  would  make 
^the  devoted  island'  free,  and  shake  Old  England  to  her  center. 
These  are  my  sentiments,  and  I  neither  dissemble  nor  deny  them. 
Peace  is  our  policy.  War  is  the  policy  of  England,  and  war  with 
us  is  now  her  favorite  policy.     Let  it  come  rather  than  dishonor! 

''The  man  is  alive  and  with  a  beard  on  his  face,  (though  it  may 
not  be  I)  who  will  see  an  American  array  in  Ireland,  and  an  Amer- 
ican general  in  the  streets  of  London,"  (Of.  Appendix  to  Con- 
gressional  Glohe,  27th  Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  pp.  74-78,  Jan.   12,  1843.) 

It  is  doubtful  if  in  all  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  pages  of 
the  official  reports  of  debates  in  Congress  there  is  to  be  found  a 
worse  and  a  more  mischievous  specimen  of  demagogic  rant  than 
this,  which  was  evidently  uttered  not  to  influence  votes  in  the  Sen- 
ate on  the  pending  bill,  but  as  pure  "buncombe"  to  strengthen  his 
hold  on  the  voters  of  Missouri,  the  headquarters  of  the  fur  trade. 

He  well  knew  that  the  presence  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  Ore- 
gon was  not  "intrusive,  and  tortious,  a  trespass  and  a  fraud.  .  . 
a  wrong  and  an  aggression,"  but  that  they  were  there  by  precisely 
the  same  right  that  our  citizens  were,  viz.,  by  virtue  of  two  freely 
executed  treaties,  that  of  October  20,  1818,  and  August  6,  1827, 
negotiated  by  some  of  the  most  patriotic,  and  able,  and  skilled  in 
diplomacy  of  all  the  men  who  have  ever  been  numbered  among  our 
Presidents,  Secretaries  of  State,  and  Ministers  to  England,  and 
that  the  treaty  of  1818  was  unanimously  ratified  by  the  Senate, 
and  that  of  1827 — after  he  himself  had  opposed  it  with  utmost 
bitterness — so  commended  itself  to  the  judgment  of  the  Senate 
that  it  was  ratified  by  31  to  7. 

He  also  knew  that  as  both  those  treaties  made  it  impossible 
for  Great  Britain  to  strengthen  her  claims  to  any  part  of  Oregon 
by  establishing  trading  posts  or  founding  settlements  therein, 
while  they  remained  in  force,  there  was  no  motive  for  any  attempt 
at  colonization  of  Oregon  by  Great  Britain,  and  that  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.  had  not  ''taken  possession  of  the  Columbia,"  nor  "forti- 
fied," nor  "colonized  it,"  nor  "driven  all  our  traders  across  the 
mountains,"  and  he  equally  well  knew  that  whenever  our  Govern- 
ment chose  to  end  the  "joint  policy"  towards  Oregon,  it  could  by 
simply  giving  twelve  months'  notice  abrogate  the  treaty.  He  well 
knew  that  what  had  so  seriously  damaged  the  fur  trade — that  there 
was  no  annual  rendezvous  of  American  fur  traders  after  1838 — was 


224  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

not  any  wroiifjlul  act  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  but  the  extensive 
substitution  at  that  time  of  silk  for  beaver  fur  in  nuiking  hats, 
which  reduced  the  value  of  beaver  skins  to  about  one-quarter  of 
what  it  had  previously  been,  and  he  equally  well  knew  that  the 
Hudson's  Ray  Co.  had  not  killed,  or  caused  to  be  killed,  1,000,  or 
100,  or  10,  or  1  of  our  fur  traders. 

He  also  knew  that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  had  a  perfect  right  to 
nse  "the  Columbia  as  a  free  port,"  since  neither  Government  had 
established  or  could  have  established  any  custom  house  there  while 
the  treaty  of  "joint  policy"  remained  in  force,  and  he  equally  well 
knew  that  the  Act  of  Parliament  to  which  he  referred  was  only  in- 
tended to  apply  to  British  subjects,  and  had  never  been  applied  to 
any  American  citizen,  and  that  while  it  had  been  a  most  salutary 
check  on  any  tendency  to  lawlessness  among  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.'s  employes  scattered  over  that  vast  wilderness,  hundreds  of 
miles  from  any  organized  government,  not  a  single  American  citi- 
zen had  ever  sulfered  any  injury  from  it,  and  that  no  honest  Amer- 
ican ever  had  the  slightest  reason  to  fear  anything  from  its  en- 
forcement. 

When  he  said  that  "every  American  that  approaches  that  re- 
gion does  so  at  the  peril  of  his  life,"  he  well  knew  that  as  chair- 
man of  the  Military  Committee  of  the  Senate,  in  January,  1831, 
he  had  reported  and  the  Senate  had  printed  in  Ex.  Doc.  No.  39  the 
letters  of  his  two  friends,  Jedediah  S.  Smith,  and  Josiah  Pilcher, 
the  first  American  fur  traders  who,  so  far  as  known,  had  encoun- 
tered the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  officers  and  employes  at  their  ])Osts 
in  the  Oregon  Territory,  and  that  both  of  them  had  written  in  the 
warmest  terms  of  the  kindness  and  courtesy  with  which  they  had 
been  received  and  treated  by  them,  and  Pilcher,  at  the  end  of  his 
letter,  had  exi)licitly  denied  the  accusation  that  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  excited  the  Indians  to  kill  and  rob  our  citizens." 

Instead  of  his  statement  that  "every  American  that  approaches 
that  region  does  so  at  the  peril  of  his  life"  being  true,  he  well 
knew  that  small  parties  of  Americans  had  been  going  to  Oregon 
to  explore,  or  to  establish  missions,  or  to  begin  farming  settle- 
ments each  year  since  1S32  (except  ]833  and  1837),  and  that  every 
one  of  them  had  reported  that  they  had  been  most  courteously 
and  kindly  received,  and  most  hospitably  treated  at  each  and  every 
one  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  posts  which  they  had  visited,  and 
had  been  holi)ed  to  establish  themselves  in  Oregon  as  missionaries 
or  settlers,  or  to  explore  the  territory  and  learn  of  its  resources 
and  ])Ossibilities,  and  he  very  well  knew  that  among  those  sent  by 
the  National  Government  expressly  to  explore  Oregon,  and  to  re- 
port everything  about  it  that  our  Government  ought  to  know,  were 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  225 

Lieut.  W.  A.  Slaciim  of  the  Navy,  sent  by  President  Jackson  in 
1835,  and  whose  report  was  read  in  the  Senate  in  1837,  and  Lieut. 
Charles  Wilkes  of  the  Navy,  who  from  April  to  October,  1841, 
''with  a  sloop  of  war,  a  brig  of  war,  two  launches,  ten  boats  and 
upwards  of  300  men"  had  made  a  much  more  extensive  exploration 
of  Oregon  by  both  land  and  water  than  any  other  single  expedition 
has  ever  made  even  to  this  day,  and  had  filed  a  Special  Report  on 
Oregon  in  the  Navy  Department  June  13,  1842,  and  that  both  of 
these  officers  had  not  only  gratefully  acknowledged  their  obliga- 
tions to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  for  the  kindest  treatment  accorded 
to  themselves,  but  had  explicitly  declared  that  all  honest  Ameri- 
cans in  Oregon  had  been  assisted  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  (Cf. 
p.  197  ante  and  Chapter  VII.  infra  for  Slacum's,  and  for  Wilkes' 
Reports.) 

Soon  after  the  war  of  1812  our  Government  had  bought  land 
at  Rouse's  Point  (which  is  by  far  the  best  place  to  protect  the 
entrance  to  Lake  Champlain),  and  had  expended  about  |200,000  in 
fortifying  it,  it  being  south  of  what  had  then  always  been  accepted 
as  the  location  of  the  parallel  of  45  degrees  north  latitude,  and  so 
well  within  our  territory ;  but  in  1818  a  joint  commission  of  Amer- 
ican and  British  officers  surveyed  the  boundary,  and  found  that 
the  parallel  of  45  degrees  north  latitude  instead  of  being  north  of 
our  works  at  Rouse's  Point  is  about  two  miles  south  of  them,  and 
that  consequently  our  fort  belonged  to  Great  Britain  (Cf.  Gallatin 
to  Clay,  date  London,  October  30,  1826,  being  No.  17,  Doc.  No.  458, 
Am.  State  Papers,  For.  Rel.,  Vol.  VI.)  ;  and  as  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant provisions  of  the  Ashburton  treaty  changed  the  boundary 
between  Vermont  and  New  York,  and  Canada,  from  the  true  loca- 
tion of  45  degrees  north  latitude  to  the  line  where  45  degrees  had 
been  supposed  to  be  prior  to  1818,  for  the  express  purpose  of  re- 
storing to  us  our  fortifications  at  Rouse's  Point,  and  as  all  this 
was  thoroughly  discussed  when  the  Ashburton  treaty  was  before 
the  Senate  in  August,  1842,  and  as  Benton  took  a  very  active  part 
in  the  debate  on  the  ratification  of  that  treaty,  and  most  virulently 
opposed  it,  it  is  simply  impossible  to  imagine  that  he  really  be- 
lieved his  assertion  that  "Great  Britain  is  systematically  prepar- 
ing for  war  with  us.  .  .  .  and  the  late  treaty  is  the  largest  of 
her  preparations." 

Language  fails  with  which  to  fittingly  characterize  the  folly  of 
Benton's  talk  about  our  sending  "30,000  friends  of  Ireland  to  Ire- 
land" in  the  event  of  a  war  with  Great  Britain,  and  about  an 
"American  army  in  Ireland,"  and  an  "American  general  in  the 
streets  of  London." 

Had  this  speech  been  delivered  by  some  beardless  and  inexperi- 
enced youth,  anxious  to  make  a  reputation  as  a  "stump  speaker," 


22(5  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

at  a  frontier  barbecue  in  all  the  heat  aud  fury  of  a  closely  con- 
tested political  campaign,  it  niight  justly  be  cited  as  a  most  ridicu- 
lous sample  of  "sj)read  ea<ile"  bombast. 

But  this,  it  must  be  remembered,  was  uttered  not  ''on  the 
stumj)"  by  a  foolish  "boy  orator,"  in  the  heat  and  fury  of  a  politi- 
cal campaign,  but  by  Benton  within  two  months  of  his  01st  birth- 
day, in  what  should  have  been  a  serious  and  rational  debate  on  a 
great  ])ubli('  qtiestion^ — in  the  United  States  Senate,  one  of  the 
most  dignified  legislative  bodies  in  the  world — and  when  Benton 
had  been  a  Senator  22  years. 

Though  this  speech  seems  to  have  been  hailed  with  rapture 
in  "IMke  County,"  Missouri,  aud  in  other  'Tooral  deestricts"  of 
that  then  extreme  frontier  State  as  evidence  of  the  possession  by 
Benton  of  such  fearless  aud  transcendent  statesmanshij),  and  such 
dauntless  patriotism  as  insured  his  re-election  for  another  six  years 
to  the  Senate,  and  though  he  was  evidently  so  proud  of  it  at  the 
time  as  to  revise  it,  and  furnished  it  for  publication  in  full  in  the 
Appendix  to  the  Cong.  Globe,  he  carefully  abridged  every  word  of 
it  out  of  his  "Abridgment  of  Debates  in  Congress,"  and 
failed  to  bring  any  of  it  into  his  field  of  vision  in  his  "Thirty  Years' 
View." 

The  report  of  the  great  debate  on  Linn's  bill  fills  165  columns 
of  the  Cong.  Globe  and  its  Appendix,  3d  Sess.,  27th  Cong.,  and  of  a 
total  membership  of  50  Senators  27  took  part,  including  almost 
every  great  name  of  both  parties. 

The  slavery  question  was  not  yet  much  entangled  with  Oregon 
affairs,  nor  did  it  become  so  to  any  considerable  extent  till  after 
the  treaty  of  1846  had  settled  the  Oregon  boundary,  and  the  at- 
tempt had  been  made,  in  1846,  to  pass  the  Wilmot  Proviso. 

Repeatedly  during  the  debate  it  was  declared  alike  by  the 
friends  and  the  o])ponents  of  the  bill  that  the  Senate  was  unani- 
mous in  the  opinion  that  our  title  to  Oregon,  at  least  as  far  north 
as  49  degrees,  was  incontestable — even  McDufiie  said  this — while 
Benton  said  "No  one  defended  the  title  of  the  British  to  one  square  . 
inch  of  the  valley  of  the  Oregon,"  and  the  chief  0])i)osition  to  the 
bill  was  from  Senators  who  were  warm  friends  of  the  Oregon  ac- 
quisition, but  who  held  that  several  of  the  provisions  of  Linn's  bill 
were  such  plain  violations  of  the  treaty  of  1827  that  to  enact  them 
into  law  without  first  giving  the  requisite  12  months'  notice  of  our 
desire  to  abrogate  that  treaty  would  be  such  a  wanton  and  inex- 
cusable affi-ont  to  Great  Britain  as  to  provoke  a  war,  which  might 
imperil  our  chance  of  holding  any  of  Oregon. 

On  February  .S,  1843,  by  a  vote  of  24  to  22,  the  Senate  j)assed 
the  bill,  and  of  the  four  absentees  it  was  stated  that  two  favored 
and  two  opposed  the  l)ill. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  227 

But  when  we  come  to  analyze  the  vote  we  find  that  of  the  22 
Senators  voting  against  the  bill  nine  had  declared  in  the  course  of 
the  debate  that  they  would  gladly  support  it,  if  its  provisions  in 
violation  of  the  treaty  of  1827  were  stricken  out,  so  that  without 
knowing  why  the  13  others  who  voted  against  it  were  opposed  to 
it,  or  for  what  reason  two  of  the  absentees  were  opposed  to  it,  it 
is  certain  that  (21  and  9  and  2)  equal  35,  or  one  more  than  two- 
thirds  of  the  whole  Senate  were  ready  on  February  3,  1843,  to  vote 
for  any  bill  about  Oregon  that  we  had  a  right  to  pass  without  first 
abrogating  the  treaty. 

The  number  and  character  of  the  Senators  who  took  part  in 
the  debate  and  the  fact  that  only  four  Senators  were  absent  on 
the  final  vote  is  proof  of  the  great  and  general  interest  of  the 
people  in  the  Oregon  question. 

But  one  Senator — McDuffie  of  South  Carolina — spoke  dispar- 
agingly of  the  value  of  Oregon,  and  he  had  then  been  a  Senator 
only  22  days,  having  been  elected  to  fill  four  years  of  an  unexpired 
term,  and  he  was  never  able  to  achieve  a  re-election  and  was  so  in- 
consequential a  figure  in  our  national  history  that  but  for  the  quo- 
tation of  some  extracts  from  this  unwise  speech  of  his  on  Oregon 
by  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Legend,  in  their  futile  attempts 
to  make  it  appear  that  "our  leading  statesmen  were  constantly  de- 
riding Oregon,"  it  is  doubtful  if  one  person  in  20,000  of  our  popu- 
lation outside  of  the  Carolinas  and  Georgia  would  ever  have  known 
that  such  a  person  as  McDuffie  ever  sat  as  a  Senator  from  South 
Carolina. 

The  instructions  to  Lieut.  Wilkes  to  explore  ''our  territory  on 
the  seaboard  and  the  Columbia  River,"  etc.,  have  already  been 
quoted.  April  28,  1841,  Wilkes  with  part  of  his  squadron  sighted 
the  mouth  of  the  Columbia,  and  "with  a  sloop  of  war,  a  brig  of 
war,  two  launches,  ten  boats  and  upwards  of  300  men"  (Cf.  Wilkes' 
testimony  in  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  Puget's  Sound  Co.  vs.  the 
United  States,  Vol.  VIII.,  p.  228),  and  he  was  diligently  engaged  till 
October  10,  1841,  in  a  far  more  extensive  exploration  of  the  Oregon 
Territory  by  land  and  water  than  has  ever  been  made  by  any  other 
one  party  even  to  this  day,  surveying  and  mapping  the  Puget's 
Sound  country  and  the  navigable  part  of  the  Columbia  River,  send- 
ing a  party  overland  east  from  Puget  Sound  to  the  Columbia  River 
and  back  to  Puget  Sound  through  the  center  of  north  Oregon, 
the  only  part  of  the  territory  which  was  really  in  dispute  with 
Great  Britain,  and  another  party  up  the  Willamette  Valley  over- 
land to  San  Francisco,  and  visiting  all  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  per- 
manent posts  south  of  49  degrees  except  Boise  and  Hall,  and  all 
the  mission  stations  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  and  the  Methodists. 
Sailing  away  from  the  Columbia  October  10,  1841,  on  November 


228  ACQUISITIOX    OF    OREGON 

24,  1841,  Wilkes  sent  dispatch  No.  98  from  Honolulu  to  the  Navy 
Department,  and  in  that  he  explains  that  he  has  not  made  the  full 
report  he  intended  to  send  on  the  condition,  value,  etc.,  of  the  Ore- 
gon Territory  for  lack  of  time  to  fully  digest  the  great  mass  of 
matter  he  has  obtained  so  as  to  ])repare  such  an  accurate  and  con- 
cise report  as  is  desirable;  and  announces  his  intention  to  do  so 
immediately  on  his  return  to  New  York;  and  says,  on  p.  2  of  this 
dispatch,  ''This  course  is  also  necessary,  as  many  inquiries  would 
naturally  arise  to  the  fair  understanding  of  the  subject  that  would 
render  verbal  information  of  much  importance  to  its  full  compre- 
hension. Having  been  well  aware  of  the  little  information  in  pos- 
session of  the  Government  relative  to  the  northern  section  of  this 
country,  including  the  Strait  of  Juan  de  Fuca,  with  its  extensive 
sounds  and  inlets,  I  thought  it  proper,  from  its  vast  importance  in 
the  settlement  of  the  boundary  question,  though  not  embraced  in 
my  instruction,  to  devote  a  large  portion  of  my  time  to  a  thorough 
survey  and  examination,  without,  however,  overlooking  or  neglect- 
ing any  part  of  that  which  was  distinctly  embraced  in  them." 

Wilkes  reached  New  York  June  10,  1842,  and  June  13,  1842, 
filed  this  promised  report,  covering  44  closely  written  foolscap 
pages,  in  the  Navy  Department.  It  has  never  been  published  in 
full,  though  ''demanded"  by  the  House  of  Representatives,  and 
though  a  resolution  equally  })eremptory  was  offered  in  the  Senate 
by  Linn,  but  subsequently  withdrawn,  as  appears  from  the  follow- 
ing: (Cf.  Journal  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  27th  Cong., 
3d  Sess.,  January  13,  1843)  "Mr.  Pendleton,  from  the  Committee 
on  Military  Affairs,  reported  the  following  resolution:  Resolved, 
That  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy  be  required  to  furnish  to  this  House 
a  copy  of  the  report  heretofore  made  to  him  by  Lieut.  Wilkes  rela- 
tive to  the  examination  of  the  Oregon  Territory.  The  resolution 
was  read  and  agreed  to." 

Id.  January  24.  "On  motion  of  Mr.  Pendleton  from  the  Commit- 
tee on  ]\Iilitary  Affairs,  it  was  ordered  that  extracts  from  the  re- 
port of  Lieut.  Wilkes  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy  of  the  examina- 
tion of  the  Oregon  Territory,  and  communicated  to  the  Military 
Committee  by  Mr.  Wilkes  with  the  permission  of  the  Secretary  of 
the  Navy,  be  printed  with  the  report  heretofore  made  by  said  com- 
mittee on  the  Oregon  Territory." 

Td.  February  1.  ''On  motion  of  Mr.  Pendleton  from  the  Com- 
mittee on  Military  Affairs  it  was 

"Resolved,  That  the  resolution  heretofore  adopted,  requesting 
the  Secretary  of  the  Navy  to  furnish  to  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives a  copy  of  Lieut.  Wilkes'  report  on  the  Oregon  Territory,  be 
rescinded." 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  229 

Senate  Journal,  27th  Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  Jan.  3,  1843,  page  67, 
Linn  submitted  a  resolution  to  print  report  of  Lieut.  Wilkes  to 
Secretary  of  Navy  relating  to  the  Territory  of  Oregon,  and  on 
January  5,  on  Linn's  motion,  it  was  laid  on  the  table. 

Reading  these  records,  and  conjecturing  that  this  Special  Re- 
port must  have  contained  things  which  in  the  then  existing  condi- 
tion of  the  Oregon  question  the  Government  deemed  it  impolitic 
to  publish,  I  went  to  Washington  in  March,  1887,  and  carefully  ex- 
amined this  and  all  the  other  unpublished  dispatches  from  Lieut. 
Wilkes,  and  found  that  it  contained  the  following  matter  which  it 
was  not  proper  then  to  print,  viz.:  (1)  An  earnest  argument  for 
54  deg.  40  min.  instead  of  49  degrees.  (A  similar  argument  was 
also  in  dispatch  No.  98  from  Honolulu.)  (2)  That  the  officers  of 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  would  be  much  averse  to  any  war  on  account 
of  their  flocks  and  herds  and  investments  in  farming  operations. 
(3)    Information  as  to  the  strategic  value  of  Walla  Walla. 

The  following  extracts  from  the  14  pages  which  were  taken 
from  this  Special  Report  of  Wilkes  and  published  in  the  second 
edition  of  the  Report  of  the  Military  Committee  of  the  House  of 
Representatives  (Repts.  of  Com.  No.  31,  H.  of  R.,  27th  Cong.,  3d 
Sess.),  commonly  known  as  Pendleton's  Second  Report  in  January, 
1843,  will  show  how  enthusiastic  Wilkes  was  as  to  the  value  of 
Oregon.  Of  Puget's  Sound  he  says:  "No  part  of  the  world  affords 
finer  inland  sounds,  or  a  greater  number  of  harbors  than  can  be 
found  here,  capable  of  receiving  the  largest  class  of  vessels,  and 
without  a  danger  in  them  that  is  not  visible.  From  the  rise  and 
fall  of  the  tides  (18  feet)  all  facilities  are  afforded  for  the  erection 
of  works  for  a  great  maritime  nation." 

Of  the  Oregon  Territory  generally  he  says:  "In  comparison 
with  our  own  country  I  should  say  that  the  labor  required  in  this 
territory  for  subsistence  and  to  acquire  wealth  is  in  the  proportion 
of  one  to  three,  or  in  other  words,  a  man  must  work  three  times  as 
long  in  the  States  to  gain  a  like  competence." 

Of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  posts,  which  various  advocates  of  the 
"Whitman  Saved  Oregon"  fiction  represent  as  strong  forts,  he  says: 
"All  the  posts  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  are  small  settlements,  con- 
sisting of  a  palisade  or  picket  with  bastions  at  their  corners  around 
the  stores  and  houses  of  the  Company  sufficient  to  protect  them 
against  Indians,  but  in  no  way  to  be  considered  as  forts,  and 
would  not  count  in  any  war  which  might  arise  between  the  na- 
tions." .  .  .  "To  conclude:  Few  portions  of  the  globe,  in  my 
opinion,  are  to  be  found  so  rich  in  soil,  diversified  in  surface  or 
capable  of  being  so  easily  rendered  the  happy  abode  of  an  indus- 
trious and  civilized  community.  For  beauty  of  scenery  and  salu- 
brity of  climate  it  is  not  surpassed.     It  is  peculiarly  adapted  for 


230  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

an  agricultuiiil  and  pastoral  peo])le,  and  no  portion  of  the  world 
beyond  the  tropics  is  to  be  found  that  will  yield  so  readily  to  the 
wants  of  Tnan  with  moderate  labor." 

Conld  anything?  be  printed  that  would  more  greatly  stimulate 
migration  to  Oregon  than  such  statements  as  these,  coming  from 
the  commander  of  the  greatest  national  exploring  expedition  our 
country  has  ever  sent  out,  whose  i)rogress  around  the  world  had 
been  watched  with  the  intensest  interest  by  the  whole  people  from 
1838  to  1842? 

How  closely  the  progress  of  the  expedition  was  watched  and 
reported  may  be  judged  from  the  following  two  articles  from  Niles' 
Register,  May  7,  1842,  p.  150 :  "Exploring  Expedition.  The  Wash- 
ington correspondent  of  the  New  York  Commercial  Advertiser 
gives  the  following  information :  'Dispatches  were  received  over- 
land a  fortnight  since  from  the  exploring  expedition.  .  .  .  The 
researches  and  surveys  made  by  them  on  the  northwest  coast  {i.  e., 
the  Oregon  Territory)  are  of  such  value  as  will  more  than  com- 
pensate the  nation  for  the  whole  cost  of  the  expedition,' " 

June  25,  1842,  p.  2(51 :  Nearly  two  and  a  half  columns  are  de- 
voted to  an  account  of  the  ''South  Sea  Exploring  Expedition." 
"The  Expedition  have  also  examined  and  surveyed  a  large  portion 
of  the  Oregon  Territory,  a  part  of  the  Upper  California,  including 
the  Columbia  and  Sacramento  Rivers  with  their  various  tributar- 
ies. Several  exploring  parties  from  the  squadron  have  explored, 
examined  and  tixed  those  portions  of  the  Oregon  Territory  least 
known.  A  map  of  the  Territory,  embracing  its  rivers,  sounds,  har- 
bors, coasts,  forts,  etc.,  has  been  |)repared,  which  will  furnish  the 
Government  with  a  mass  of  valuable  information  relative  to  our 
possessions  on  the  northwest  coast  and  the  whole  of  Oregon." 

As  one  of  the  absolutely  indispensable  postulates  of  the  Whit- 
man Legend  is  that  until  Dr.  Whitman — an  unknown  man  of  no 
special  intellectual  ability  and  who  up  to  that  time  had  never  writ- 
ten so  much  as  one  short  sentence  expressing  the  least  interest  in 
or  concern  about  the  political  destinies  of  any  part  of  the  old  Ore- 
gon Territory — arrived  in  Washington  (according  to  the  Whitman 
Legend  on  March  3,  but,  in  fact,  not  earlier  than  late  in  March, 
or  more  likely  about  April  10  or  12,  1843) — our  Government  and 
the  people  of  the  country  at  large  were  deplorably  ignorant  about 
Oregon  and  had  been  deceived  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  into  think- 
ing it  worthless  and  inaccessible;  all  the  advocates  of  that  legend, 
from  Gray  to  Mowry,  either  nuilign  Wilkes  or  utterly  ignore  his 
work,  and  not  a  single  one  of  them — Gray,  Rev.  M.  Eells,  Barrows, 
Nixon,  Craighead,  Mowry,  Mrs.  Dye,  Laurie,  Hallock,  Edwards  or 
Penrose — has  ever  allowed  any  one  to  know  anything  from  their 
writings  about  the  extent  and  value  of  Wilkes'  explorations,  or 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  231 

that  he  reached  Washington  and  filed  this  report  June  13,  1842, 
or  that  Tyler's  Administration  had  had  before  it  not  only  this  Spe- 
cial Report,  but  also  his  other  dispatches  about  Oregon  and  had 
had  opportunities  for  daily  interviews  with  Wilkes  and  the  other 
officers  of  his  expedition  (who  had  seen  very  much  more  of  and 
knew  vastly  more  about  Oregon  than  Whitman  or  any  other  mis- 
sionary did)  for  nine  months  before  Whitman  could  by  any  possi- 
bility have  reached  Washington.  Several  of  them,  notably  Gray 
and  Mrs.  Dye,  do  not  hesitate  to  malign  him. 

Thus  Gray,  p.  204  (writing  in  1870),  said:  ''To  the  disgrace 
of  the  leader  of  that  squadron,  the  general  impression  of  all  the 
early  settlers  of  this  country  is  to  the  present  day  that  he  under- 
stood and  tasted  the  qualities  of  Dr.  McLoughlin's  liquors,  and  re- 
ceived the  polite  attentions  of  the  gentlemen  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  with  far  more  pleasure  than  he  looked  into  or  regarded  the 
wants  of  this  infant  settlement  of  his  countrymen." 

Mrs.  Eva  Emery  Dye  repeats  and  enlarges  this  shameless  slan- 
der (pp.  176-7,  ''McLoughlin  and  Old  Oregon")  in  a  purely  imag- 
inary dialogue  between  Lieut.  Wilkes  and  George  Abernethy  (the 
Methodist  mission  steward)  as  follows: 

"  *Do  you  advise  us  to  establish  a  government?'  he  asked. 
"  'Not  yet,'  said  the  Commodore.  'Wait !  The  British  interest 
already  feels  itself  threatened  by  the  presence  of  this  exploring 
squadron.  Any  action  on  your  part  may  precipitate  trouble,  in 
which  case  you  are  too  few  and  too  far  away  to  be  properly  sup- 
ported.    Wait  till  your  numbers  augment.' 

"  'Dr.  McLoughlin's  wine  has  afl'ected  his  judgment,'  said  the 
men  of  the  mission. 

"In  the  purple  twilight  Commodore  Wilkes  walked  in  the  fields 
of  wheat.  The  crescent  moon  hung  over  Mount  Hood.  'A  lovely 
land,'  he  murmured;  'charming  by  day,  enchanting  by  night.  Tell 
me,  what  do  you  Americans  think  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.?' 

"  'The  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  is  Great  Britain's  instrumentality  for 
securing  Oregon,'  was  the  answer. 

"  'But,'  urged  the  Commodore,  'the  missionaries  have  received 
untold  favors  from  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  and  if  they  are  gentle- 
men it  is  their  duty  to  return  them.' 

"The  missionary  faced  about  in  the  Commodore's  path.  'Return 
them?  Certainly.  I  will  exchange  favors  with  Dr.  McLoughlin  or 
any  other  man  or  set  of  men,  but  I  will  not  sell  mv  country  for 
it.''" 

Wilkes  was  almost  angry  with  this  "blunt  missionary."  It  is 
quite  safe  to  say  that  for  not  one  sentence  of  this  dialogue  can 
Mrs.  Dye  produce  any  better  authority  than  her  own  exuberant 
fancy  and  her  overweening  ambition  to  write  "a  taking  book,''  with- 


232  ACQUISITION   OF   OREGON 

out  the  least  care  whether  it  was  true  or  false.  There  is  not  the 
remotest  probability  that  either  "George  Abernethy,  the  mission 
steward,"  or  any  other  missionary,  "blunt"  or  otherwise,  ever  would 
have  dared  when  conversing  with  Lieut.  Wilkes  to  imply  that 
Wilkes  had  said  anything  which  meant  that  he  would  "sell  his 
country,"  or  that  any  advice  he  had  given  if  followed  would  cause 
the  said  missionary  or  any  one  else  to  "sell  his  country,"  and 
equally  destitute  of  any  probability  is  the  statement  she  puts  in 
Wilkes'  mouth  that  "The  British  interest  already  feels  itself  threat- 
ened by  the  presence  of  this  exploring  squadron."  There  is  not  a 
hint  of  any  such  idea  in  any  of  Wilkes'  unpublished  dispatches  nor 
in  his  Special  Report,  nor  in  his  great  five  volume  Report  pub- 
lished in  1845,  nor  in  his  testimony  in  ISGG  in  the  great  case  of 
the  Hudson's  IJay  Co.  and  the  Puget  Sound  Agricultural  Co.  vs. 
the  United  States,  and  it  plainly  is  another  mere  creature  of  Mrs. 
Dye's  extravagant  fancy. 

p]qually  preposterous  is  the  plain  implication  of  this  imagined 
dialogue  that  this  Methodist  mission  steward,  who  had  only  been 
in  Oregon  eleven  months  when  Wilkes'  squadron  reached  there, 
was  a  more  patriotic  man  than  Lieut.  Charles  Wilkes. 

Reynolds  of  Illinois  had  introduced  a  bill  identical  with  Linn's 
bill  (No.  771),  House  of  Representatives),  and  it,  with  various  me- 
morials and  proceedings  of  public  meetings  praying  for  the  adop- 
tion of  suitable  measures  by  Congress  for  the  occupation  and  set- 
tlement of  the  Oregon  Territory,  had  been  referred  to  a  select  com- 
mittee consisting  of  Reynolds  of  Illinois,  Miller  of  Missouri,  Daw- 
son of  Louisiana,  Cross  of  Arkansas,  and  Kennedy  of  Indiana. 

February  9,  1843,  this  committee  made  a  report  of  eight  pages 
(No.  157,  Repts.  of  Coms,,  House  of  Representatives,  27th  Cong., 
3d  Sess.,  Vol.  II.),  in  which  they  say:  "The  claim  of  the  United 
States  to  the  tract  of  country  called  the  Oregon  Territory  .  .  . 
is  founded  upon  discovery,  occupancy  and  treaty.  It  has  not  been 
questioned  by  any  ])ower  but  Great  Britain ;  and  it  is  not  to  the 
knowledge  of  the  committee  doubted  or  disputed  by  any  American 
statesman. 

"This  claim  has  been  so  often  and  ably  investigated  and  as- 
serted, and  so  fully  established  by  the  executive  department  of  this 
Government,  and  by  reports  of  committees,  and  in  debates  in  both 
branches  of  Congress,  that  the  committee  have  not  considered  it 
necessary  for  any  useful  ])urpose  to  enter  into  any  farther  argu- 
ment in  support  of  its  validity  or  justice."  .  .  .  "In  conclusion, 
the  committee  beg  leave  to  remark,  that  in  their  opinion  those  per- 
sons mislead  themselves  who  believe  that  this  territory,  under 
suitable  legislation  by  Congress,  will  not,  like  the  new  States  that 
have  sprung  u])  in  the  Mississippi  valley,  rise  rapic^ly  into  agri- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  233 

cultural,  commercial  and  political  importance."  When  Linn's  bill 
was  sent  over  from  the  Senate,  it,  with  Reynold's  bill,  was  referred 
to  the  Committee  on  Foreign  Affairs,  of  which  that  brilliant  states- 
man and  "living  record  of  the  diplomatic  history  of  our  country," 
ex-President  John  Quincy  Adams,  was  chairman,  and  Feb,  10,  1843, 
his  diary  reads  (Cf.  Memoirs  of  J.  Q.  Adams,  Vol.  XI.,  p.  321)  : 
"When  the  Committee  on  Foreign  Affairs  was  called,  I  reported  the 
bill  from  the  Senate  for  the  occupation  of  the  Oregon  Territory  and 
for  other  purposes,  and  the  same  bill  reported  by  Reynolds  of  Illi- 
nois in  the  House,  without  amendments,  and  with  the  opinion  of 
the  committee  that  neither  of  them  ought  to  pass.  They  were  then, 
at  my  motion,  referred,  without  opposition,  to  the  committee  of 
the  whole  on  the  state  of  the  Union,"  and  thus  ended  the  action  of 
the  27th  Congress,  3d  Session,  on  the  Oregon  question. 

Four  Presidents  had  built  strong  and  deep  the  foundations  on 
which  our  claims  to  Oregon  rested,  viz. : 

First,  Thomas  Jefferson  (a)  by  buying  the  Louisiana  Territory 
in  1803,  and  so  giving  us  a  claim  by  contiguity  of  territory  along 
the  whole  east  line  of  Oregon,  as  far  north  as  49  degrees  (which 
was  then  and  long  after  supposed  to  have  been  fixed  as  the  boundary 
between  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  territories  and  the  French  provinces 
in  America,  in  conformity  with  the  tenth  article  of  the  Treaty  of 
Utrecht,  in  1713,  though  it  is  now  established  that  this  belief  [on 
which  several  treaties  were  based]  was  erroneous,  and  that  although 
commissioners  were  appointed  by  France  and  England  according  to 
the  stipulations  of  that  treaty,  they  did  nothing  and  no  such  line 
was  ever  run). 

(b)  By  originating  and  sending  out  the  Lewis  and  Clark  Ex- 
pedition (1803-1806),  and  so  adding  to  our  claim  by  priority  of 
discovery  of  the  mouth  of  the  river,  by  Gray,  in  1792,  a  claim  by 
priority  of  exploration  of  the  whole  breadth  of  its  basin,  from  the 
Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Pacific. 

Second,  James  Madison  (who  had  been  Secretary  of  State  under 
Jefferson),  (a)  by  favoring  the  Astoria  Expedition  (1810-1813), 
which  added  to  our  claims  by  priority  of  discovery  and  exploration 
a  claim  by  priority  of  actual  occupancy. 

(b)  By  instructing  our  commissioners  to  negotiate  the  Treaty 
of  Ghent,  that  they  should  insist  on  the  restoration  of  Astoria  in 
any  treaty  of  peace. 

Third,  James  Monroe  (who  had  been  one  of  the  commissioners 
who  negotiated  the  purchase  of  the  Louisiana  Territor}',  and,  as 
Secretary  of  State  under  Madison,  had  sent  the  instructions  to  our 
Commissioners  to  negotiate  the  Treaty  of  Ghent),  (a)  by  insisting 
on  and  securing  the  restoration  of  Astoria,  October  0,  1818. 


234  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

(b)  By  negotiating  the  treaty  of  October  20,  1818,  with  Great 
Britain,  being  the  first  Treaty  of  Joint  Policy  toward  Oregon 
(though  more  commonly  called  the  first  Treaty  of  Joint  Occu- 
pancy), with  a  provision  that  made  it  impossible  that  while  it  re- 
mained in  force  (ireat  Britain  could  either  strengthen  her  claims 
or  weaken  ours  to  any  part  of  Oregon,  either  by  establishing  trad- 
ing posts  or  making  settlements. 

(c)  By  making  the  treaty  of  February  22,  1819,  with  Spain, 
which  not  only  ceded  us  Florida,  and  defined  the  south  and  west 
boundaries  of  the  Louisiana  Territory,  but  also  fixed  the  northern 
boundary  of  California  (never  before  defined)  at  42  degrees  north 
latitude,  and  ceded  to  us  all  her  claims  north  of  that  line. 

(d)  By  negotiating  the  treaty  with  Kussia  of  April  5,  1824, 
which  fixed  the  south  line  of  Russian  America  (now  Alaska),  at 
54  deg.  and  40  niin.,  and  so  defined  the  north  boundary  of  the  Ore- 
gon Territory,  as  the  treaty  of  1819  had  its  south  boundary. 

(e)  By  the  negotiations  of  1823-24  with  Great  Britain  on  the 
Oregon  question,  resulting  in  no  treaty,  but  in  the  course  of  which 
Great  Britain,  for  the  first  time,  offered  us  the  line  of  49  degrees 
to  the  most  northeasterly  branch  of  the  Columbia,  and  thence  the 
river  to  the  ocean,  which  was,  and  was  understood  to  be  by  all  well 
informed  statesmen  in  both  countries,  an  abandonment  by  Great 
Britain  of  all  claims  to  any  territory  south  and  east  of  the  Colum- 
bia, and  so  left  really  in  dispute,  after  1824,  only  about  58,000 
square  miles,  being  that  part  of  the  present  State  of  ^Yashington 
north  and  west  of  the  Columbia. 

(f)  By  the  announcement  July  22,  1823,  to  both  Great  Britain 
and  Russia,  of  the  first  form  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  in  the  state- 
ment that  the  American  continents  were  not  thenceforth  to  be  open 
to  colonization  by  any  European  power. 

The  fuller  form  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  was  stated  in  Monroe's 
Annual  Message  December  2,  1823.  Though  called  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine it  is  altogether  probable  that  John  Q.  Adams  is  entitled  to 
quite  as  much  credit  for  formulating  it  as  Monroe. 

Fourth,  John  Quincy  Adams — far  and  away  the  ablest  American 
diplomat  of  those  days  (who  had  acted  as  Monroe's  most  eflicient 
Secretary  of  State  in  all  these  negotiations — 1818  to  1824,  inclus- 
ive)— and  who  had  been  one  of  our  Commissioners  to  negotiate  the 
Treaty  of  Ghent;  and  who,  as  President,  directed  every  step  of  the 
negotiations  of  1820-27,  which  resulted  in  the  second  Treaty  of 
Joint  Policy  (or  Joint  Occupancy),  signed  August  0,  1827,  in  which 
again  our  rights  were  so  safeguarded  that  while  it  remained  in 
force  Great  Britain  could  not,  by  any  settlements  or  trading  posts, 
strengthen  her  claims  to  any  part  of  Oregon.  Early  in  these  nego- 
tiations Great  Britain  again  offered  to  make  the  line  49  degrees  to 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  235 

the  most  northeasterly  branch  of  the  Columbia,  and  thence  the 
river  to  the  ocean,  which  was  immediately  refused  by  our  plenipo- 
tentiary, Albert  Gallatin,  who  again  offered  the  line  on  wliich  all 
these  Presidents  had  always  insisted  of  49  degrees  to  the  coast, 
with  the  instruction  by  direct  order  of  President  Adams,  that  that 
line  was  ''our  ultimatum." 

It  is  altogether  probable  that  the  services  of  John  Quincy  Adams 
in  securing  Oregon  to  us  were  at  least  as  great  as  those  of  any 
other  statesman,  with  the  possible  exception  of  Jefferson,  and  not 
a  sentence  is  to  be  found  in  any  of  his  state  papers,  or  in  his 
speeches  in  Congress,  or  in  his  voluminous  correspondence,  and 
his  full  and  minute  diary,  which  indicates  that  he  ever  entertained 
for  an  instant  any  thought  that  we  should  recede  from  the  ''ulti- 
matum" of  49  degrees  as  the  most  favorable  line  we  could  ever  con- 
cede to  Great  Britain  for  the  northern  boundary  of  Oregon. 

There  can  be  no  question  therefore  that  his  adverse  report  on 
Linn's  bill,  and  Reynolds'  bill,  was  due,  not  to  indifference  as  to  the 
political  destiny  of  the  Oregon  Territory,  nor  to  ignorance  as  to  its 
value  to  us,  but  to  his  conviction — based  on  a  more  complete  knowl- 
edge than  any  other  man  possessed  of  every  detail  of  the  various 
negotiations  with  France,  Spain,  Russia  and  Great  Britain  which 
had  affected  our  title  to  Oregon — that  these  bills  ought  not  to  be 
passed,  because  they  plainly  violated  our  obligations,  freely  entered 
into  in  times  of  profound  peace,  in  the  treaties  of  1818  and  1827. 

It  has  seemed  necessary  to  quote  very  fully  from  the  proceed- 
ings of  the  27th  Congress  (and  especially  its  second  and  third  ses- 
sions), because  while  they  have  no  connection  with  the  origin  and 
purpose  of  Whitman's  ride,  the  quotations  herein  made  most  indis- 
putably establish  that  there  was  not  the  slightest  need  of  Whitman 
to  inform  the  Government  about  the  value  of  Oregon  to  the  United 
States,  nor  to  stimulate  President  Tyler  and  Daniel  Webster  to  in- 
sist on  holding  it  as  far  north  as  49  degrees,  and  that  he — knowing 
absolutely  nothing  of  the  region  really  in  dispute  (except  the  farms 
and  gardens  of  Fort  Vancouver),  could  not  have  furnished  any  in- 
formation of  the  slightest  value  to  an  administration  which,  for 
more  than  nine  months  before  he  could  by  any  possibility  have 
reached  Washington,  had  had  opportunities  for  daily  interviews 
with  Wilkes  and  the  other  officers  of  his  expedition,  who  from  per- 
sonal explorations  and  surveys  knew  the  value  of  the  region  really 
in  dispute,  and  particularly  of  what,  as  the  world  then  looked,  was 
immeasurably  its  most  important  part — the  Puget  Sound  country — 
far  better  than  Whitman  or  any  other  missionary  to  the  Oregon 
Indians  did  then,  or  for  many  years  thereafter. 

The  records  of  the  earlier  diplomatic  negotiations,  and  Congres- 
sional debates,  and  reports  of  Congressional  committees,  and  Gov- 


236  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

eminent  explorers  and  agents,  are  only  to  be  found  in  a  few  large 
libraries,  and  the  vital  facts  about  them  have  been  for  a  generation 
past  so  suppressed  and  misstated  by  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman 
Legend  that  it  has  seemed  needful  to  quote  from  them  extensively; 
but  as  the  reports  of  the  later  negotiations  and  Congressional  de- 
bates, and  committee  reports  and  reports  of  Government  explorers 
and  agents  are  in  hundreds  of  libraries  in  all  parts  of  the  land,  and 
as  concerning  events  after  the  spring  of  1843,  there  was  no  special 
inducement  to  misstate  Governmental  action  by  even  the  most 
myth-loving  advocates  of  the  ''Whitman  Saved  Oregon"  Story, 
there  is  no  necessity  for  such  extensive  quotations  from  what  is  so 
easily  accessible  to  all  who  care  to  go  thoroughly  into  the  subject, 
and  consequently  the  later  governmental  action  will  be  presented 
more  briefly,  but  with  such  references  to  original  sources  as  will 
enable  the  reader  to  follow  the  matter  up  as  fully  as  inclination  and 
leisure  may  impel. 

The  "Oregon  jingoes"  who  followed  Benton's  lead  continually 
insisted,  not  only  during  the  campaign  which  resulted  in  the  elec- 
tion of  James  K.  Polk  over  Henry  Clay  as  President,  but  as  late  as 
January  and  February,  1845,  that  it  was  imperatively  necessary  for 
the  United  States  to  immediately  proceed  to  occupy  Oregon  with 
settlers,  and  to  encourage  them  to  go  there  by  passing  Linn's  bill 
granting  040  acres  of  land  to  any  male  over  18  years  of  age  who 
would  settle  and  live  on  it  for  five  years,  subsequently  amended  (by 
Linn's  successor  in  the  Senate,  D.  R.  Atchison),  by  providing  a 
grant  of  160  acres  additional  to  the  wife  (in  case  the  settler  should 
be  a  married  man),  and  100  acres  more  for  each  child  under  18 
years  of  age  that  he  might  have  when  he  settled  on  the  land,  and 
160  acres  more  for  each  child  he  might  have  during  the  five  years 
before  his  title  would  be  completed.  (Cf.  for  Atchison's  amended 
bill,  Cong.  Globe,  28th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  p.  56,  date  December  21, 
1843.) 

Tender  these  provisions  a  family  having  8  children  would  have 
received  2,080  acres,  one  of  10  children  2,400  acres,  and  one  of  12 
children  2,720  acres. 

One  of  the  arguments  they  most  persistently  advanced  for  the 
urgent  necessity  of  immediate  action  by  our  Government  was  that 
we  could  never  hope  by  negotiation  with  England  to  secure  a  satis- 
factory boundary  line,  because  she  was  entirely  satisfied  to  let 
things  remain  indefinitely  as  they  were  under  the  treaties  of  1818 
and  1827.  since  she  was  receiving  all  the  benefits  resulting  from 
their  provision  for  what  was  commonly  called  the  Joint  Occupancy 
of  Oregon,  (but  might  much  more  properly  be  called  the  Joint  Pol- 
icy of  the  two  governments  toward  Oregon),  and  under  that  pro- 
vision was  really  in  absolute  control  of  the  Oregon  Territory,  and 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  237 

*'by  means  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  was  colonizing  it,  establishing 
forts  in  it  to  defend  it  against  American  troops,  occupying  all  its 
eligible  sites  for  mills  and  towns,  building  mills,  and  cutting  and 
marketing  all  the  best  of  its  timber  south  of  the  Columbia,  so  that 
when  the  boundary  should  be  established  at  the  Columbia  we  would 
have  to  buy  our  ship  timber  from  her,  making  game  laws  in  it,  con- 
stantly irritating  and  annoying  the  Indians  south  of  the  Columbia 
so  as  to  make  them  hostile,  and  favoring  and  humoring  those  north 
of  the  Columbia  so  as  to  make  them  friendly,  and  in  all  possible 
ways  oppressing  Americans  who  went  to  Oregon  to  settle."  (Cf.  in 
Cong,  Globe,  1st  and  2d  Sess.,  28th  Cong.,  and  Appendix  to  1st 
Sess.,  speeches  of  Senators  Benton,  Buchanan,  William  Allen  of 
Ohio,  D.  R.  Atchison  of  Missouri,  and  in  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives of  Stephen  A.  Douglass,  John  Wentworth  and  J.  A.  McCler- 
nand  of  Illinois,  Alexander  Duncan  of  Ohio,  Kennedy  of  Indiana, 
Cary  of  Maine,  and  others.)     The  facts  are: 

First.  The  English  were  not  and  never  had  been  "in  absolute 
control  of  Oregon." 

Second.  They  were  not  colonizing  it.  In  the  autumn  of  1843 
the  entire  number  of  British  settlers  (who  were  all  ex-employes  of 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  whose  term  of  service  had  expired),  was  less 
than  50 — less  than  two  a  year  for  all  the  years  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  and  its  predecessor  in  interest,  the  North  West  Co.,  had  been  in 
Oregon.  (Cf.  Nesmith's  Address.,  Tr.  Or.  Pioneer  Association  1875, 
p.  56.) 

Third.  As  to  "forts  to  defend  Oregon  against  Americans,"  there 
were  none,  but,  as  stated  by  Lieut.  Wilkes  in  his  Special  Report  of 
June  13,  1842,  they  were  all  mere  Indian  trading  posts,  "but  in  no 
way  to  be  considered  as  forts."  (Cf.  "Pendleton's  Second  Report," 
being  Report  No.  31,  27th  Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  p.  75,  quoted  on  p.  229, 
ante. ) 

Fourth.  Instead  of  occupying  all  its  eligible  sites  for  mills,  fac- 
tories and  towns,  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  had  saw  and  grist  mills 
about  six  miles  above  Vancouver,  and  also  at  Colvile,  about  500 
miles  northeast  on  the  Columbia;  and  Dr.  John  McLoughlin,  on  his 
own  account,  had  laid  claim  to  a  mill  and  town  site  at  the  Falls  of 
the  Willamette,  where  Oregon  City  now  is;  and  they  had  trading 
posts  on  sites  where  three  considerable  towns  and  one  very  small 
one  have  since  been  built,  viz.:  Vancouver  and  Walla  Walla  (now 
Wallula),  in  Washington,  and  Astoria  and  Oregon  City,  in  Oregon 
(the  last  named  not  opened  till  1844  or  1845)  ;  that  is,  on  the  292,- 
000  square  miles  of  the  old  Oregon  Territory,  between  1813  and 
1844,  they  had  actually  occupied  three  millsites  and  four  town- 
sites,  no  one  of  the  townsites  being  one  on  which  a  great  city  has 
been  built  to  this  day. 


238  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

Fifth.  All  the  timber  they  cut  and  marketed  during  the  whole 
time  they  occupied  Oregon  was  not  the  one  millionth  part  of  the 
timber  then  standing  there,  and  not  the  one  hundred  thousandth 
part  of  the  timber  that  grew  there  during  that  time. 

Sixth.  They  no  more  made  "game  laws"  in  Oregon  than  they 
made  laws  establishing  castes  like  those  of  India,  or  laws  of  primo- 
geniture like  those  of  England. 

Seventh.  Their  treatment  of  the  Indians  was  exactly  the  same 
south  and  north  of  the  Columbia,  and  was  such  as  to  receive  the 
highest  praise  from  American  missionaries,  settlers,  explorers  and 
government  agents. 

Eighth.  In  no  way  did  they  oppress  any  well-behaved  American 
who  went  to  settle  in  Oregon,  or  who  visited  the  Territory  for  pleas- 
ure or  as  an  explorer. 

The  absolutely  indisputable  proof  of  the  seventh  and  eighth 
propositions  is  stated  herein  in  chapter  No.  VII.  on  the  "Truth 
About  the  Relation  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  the  American  Ex- 
ploration, Occupation  and  Settlement  of  Oregon." 

False  as  are  all  these  premises  of  the  "Oregon  jingoes,"  equally 
false  is  their  conclusion  that  England  was  perfectly  content  to  let 
matters  rest  indefinitely  under  the  treaty  of  1827,  because  she  was 
obtaining  all  the  benefits  of  that  treaty,  and  constantly  strengthen- 
ing her  claims  to  Oregon. 

The  very  opposite  was  the  case.  The  English  Government  could 
not  strengthen  its  claims  to  any  part  of  Oregon  while  that  treaty 
continued  in  force,  and,  alarmed  by  the  continuous  discussion  in 
Congress  from  1838  onwards,  and  the  widespread  fever  from  Massa- 
chusetts to  Missouri,  and  from  Wisconsin  to  Louisiana,  to  migrate 
to  Oregon,  and  the  prompt  rejection  by  Webster  (in  the  informal 
conferences  preceding  the  formal  negotiations  for  the  Webster- 
Ashburton  treaty)  of  any  line  south  of  49  degrees  as  a  negotiable 
boundary  line  for  the  United  States,  with  the  rapidly  increasing 
agitation  for  54  deg.  40  min.  and  the  great  activity  of  the  Ameri- 
can press,  which,  as  the  Edinburgh  Review  said,  in  July,  1843  (p. 
100)  :  "Teems  with  publications  on  the  subject;"  the  English  Gov- 
ernment, instead  of  "being  content  to  let  matters  rest  indefinitely 
under  the  treaty  of  1827,"  only  five  days  after  the  completion  of  the 
Ashburton  treaty  urged  our  Government  to  renew  negotiations  for 
the  settlement  of  the  Oregon  boundary,  perceiving  plainly  enough 
that  unless  it  was  sj>eedily  done  there  was  danger  that  they  might 
not  be  able  to  secure  a  line  so  favorable  even  as  the  49th  degree. 

Note : — The  principal  of  these  American  publications  about  Ore- 
gon were:  Irving's  "Astoria"  (1836)  and  "Bonneville"  (1837) 
(both  Immediately  republished  in  England,  and  widely  read  in  both 
countries)  ;  Lieut.   Slacum's  Report    (Sen.  Ex.   Doc.   No.  24,  25th 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  239 

Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  Dec.  18,  1837)  ;  Rev.  Samuel  Parker's  "Journal  of  a 
Tour  Beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains"  (1838)  ;  Linn's  Report  (No. 
470,  Vol.  v..  Sen.  Doc,  25th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  June  0,  1838,  with  the 
Ultimatum  Map)  ;  Townsend's  "Narrative  of  a  Journey  Across  the 
Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Columbia"  (1839),  which  was  immediately 
republished  in  London. 

Cushing's  Report  and  Supplemental  Report  (p.  112)  (No.  101, 
Reports  of  Coms.,  House  of  Representatives,  25th  Cong.,  3d  Sess., 
February  16,  1839,  with  the  Ultimatum  Map).  Of  this  Report  10,- 
000  copies  were  ordered  printed  "in  addition  to  the  usual  number." 

Greenhow's  "History  of  Oregon  and  California,"  first  or  Govern- 
ment Edition,  228  pages,  with  map  and  index,  of  which  2,500  copies 
"in  addition  to  the  usual  number"  were  ordered  printed  by  the 
Senate  February  10,  1840,  (as  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  No.  174,  Vol.  IV.,  2«)th 
Cong.,  1st  Sess.).  It  was  also  immediately  reprinted  in  both  New 
York  and  London,  as  a  book  for  general  sale,  with  no  change  ex- 
cept striking  ofiE  from  the  title  page  the  fact  that  it  was  a  Govern- 
ment document,  and  doubtless  the  United  States  Secret  Service 
fund  paid  the  expenses  of  the  London  edition. 

Thomas  J.  Farnham's  "Travels  in  the  Great  Western  Prairies, 
the  Anahuac  and  Rocky  Mountains  and  in  the  Oregon  Territory," 
(1st  Edition,  Poughkeepsie,  N.  Y.,  1841). 

Pendleton's  First  Report  or  Report  of  the  Military  Committee, 
House  of  Representatives  (No.  830,  Reports  of  Coms.,  House  of  Rep- 
resentatives, Vol.  IV.,  27th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.  [64  pp.],  with  the  Ulti- 
matum Map),  of  which  5,000  copies  "in  addition  to  the  usual  num- 
ber" were  ordered  printed  May  27,  1842. 

Pendleton's  Second  Report,  No.  31,  Reports  Coms.,  House  of  Rep- 
resentatives, 27th  Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  p.  78  (with  the  Ultimatum  Map), 
being  the  First  Report  (No.  830,  27th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.)  with  14  pp. 
of  extracts  from  Lieut  Wilkes'  Special  Report  added,  and  5,000 
copies  ordered  printed  January  4,  1843. 

Caleb  Cushing's  four  long  articles  in  North  American  Review, 
October,  1828  (36  pp.),  January,  1837  (37  pp.),  January,  1839  (34 
pp.),  and  January,  1840  (70  pp.)  ;  article  in  Hunt's  Merchants' 
Magazine  for  April,  1842  (then  a  very  widely  circulated  and  influ- 
ential publication),  on  "Oregon  Territory;"  copied  in  full  in  Niles' 
Register  for  May  21,  1842.  (Besides  these  there  were  almost  in- 
numerable newspaper  articles.) 

Doc.  No.  2,  of  Vol.  I.,  of  House  Ex.  Docs.,  29th  Cong.,  1st  Sess., 
1845-46,  is  President  Polk's  first  Annual  Message,  date  December 
2,  1845  (this  is  also  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  No.  1,  29th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  and 
it  is  also  printed  in  App.  to  Cong.  Globe,  29th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  pp. 
1-37),  and  among  accompanying  documents  is  "Correspondence  with 
the  British  Minister  in  Relation  to  Oregon,"  covering  pp.  138-192, 


240  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

inclusive.  On  p.  139  is  first  a  letter  to  D.  Webster,  Secretary  of 
State,  from  H.  S.  Fox,  British  Minister  to  the  United  States,  dated 
Washington,  November  15,  1842,  announcing  the  desire  of  the  Brit- 
ish Government,  now  that  the  northeast  boundary  was  settled,  to 
take  up  the  Oregon  boundary,  and  enclosing  the  following  extract 
from  a  letter  of  Lord  Aberdeen  to  Mr.  Fox: 

''Foreign  Office,  Oct.  18,  1842. 

"Sir:  The  ratifications  of  the  treaty,  concluded  on  the  9th  of 
August"  {i.  e.,  the  Ashburton  Treaty,  W.  I.  M.)  "between  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States,  were  exchanged  by  me,  on  the  13th 
inst.,  with  the  Minister  of  the  United  States  accredited  to  the  court 
of  Her  Majesty. 

"The  more  important  question  of  the  disputed  boundary  between 
Her  Majesty's  North  American  provinces  and  the  United  States 
being  thus  settled,  and  the  feelings  which  have  been  mutually  pro- 
duced in  the  people  of  both  countries  being  evidently  favorable,  and 
indicative  of  a  general  desire  to  continue  on  the  best  footing  with 
each  other,  it  has  appeared  to  Her  Majesty's  Government  that  both 
parties  would  act  wisely  in  availing  themselves  of  so  auspicious  a 
moment  to  endeavor  to  bring  to  a  settlement  the  only  remaining 
subject  of  territorial  difference,  which,  although  not  so  hazardous 
as  that  of  the  northeast  boundary,  is  nevertheless,  even  at  this 
moment,  not  without  risk  to  the  good  understanding  between  the 
two  countries,  and  may,  in  course  of  time,  be  attended  with  the 
same  description  of  danger  to  their  mutual  peace  as  the  question 
which  has  recently  been  adjusted.  I  speak  of  the  line  of  boundary 
west  of  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

"You  are  aware  that  Lord  Ashburton  was  furnished  with  specific 
and  detailed  instructions  with  respect  to  the  treatment  of  this  point 
of  difference  between  the  two  Governments  in  the  general  negotia- 
tions with  which  he  was  intrusted,  arid  which  he  has  brought  to  a 
satisfactory  issue.  For  reasons  which  it  is  not  necessary  here  to 
state  at  length,  that  point,  after  having  been  made  the  subject  of 
coilference  with  the  American  Secretary  of  State,  was  not  further 
pressed.  The  main  ground  alleged  by  his  lordship  (p.  140)  for 
abstaining  from  {)roposing  to  carry  on  the  discussion  with  respect 
to  the  northwest  boundary  was  the  apprehension  lest,  by  so  doing, 
the  settlement  of  the  far  more  important  matter  of  the  northeast 
boundary  should  be  impeded  or  exposed  to  the  hazard  of  failure. 

"This  ground  of  apprehension  now  no  longer  exists;  and  Her 
Majesty's  Government,  therefore,  being  anxious  to  endeavor  to  re- 
move, so  far  as  depends  on  them,  all  cause,  however  remote,  of  even 
contingent  risk  to  the  good  understanding  now  so  happily  restored 
between  two  countries  which  ought  never  to  be  at  variance  with 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  241 

each  other,  have  determined  to  propose  to  the  Government  of  the 
United  States  to  meet  them  in  an  endeavor  to  adjust  by  treaty  the 
unsettled  question  of  boundary  west  of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  On 
the  receipt  of  this  dispatch,  therefore,  I  have  to  desire  that  you 
will  propose  to  Mr.  Webster  to  move  the  President  to  furnish  the 
United  States  Minister  at  this  court  with  such  instructions  as  will 
enable  him  to  enter  upon  the  negotiation  of  this  matter  with  such 
person  as  may  be  appointed  by  Her  Majesty  for  that  object,  and 
you  will  assure  him,  at  the  same  time,  that  we  are  prepared  to  pro- 
ceed to  the  consideration  of  it  in  a  perfect  spirit  of  fairness,  and  to 
adjust  it  on  a  basis  of  equitable  compromise. 

"I  am,  with  great  truth  and  regard,  sir,  your  most  obedient, 
humble  servant. 


''ABERDEEN. 


"H.  S.  Fox,  Esq.,  etc.,  etc." 


Page  140,  immediately  following  above,  is :  "Mr.  Webster  to  Mr. 
Fox:" 

"Department  of  State. 

"Washington,  Nov.  25,  1842. 

"Sir:  I  have  the  honor  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  your  note 
of  the  15th  inst.  upon  the  question  of  the  Oregon  or  northwest 
boundary,  with  an  extract  of  a  dispatch  recently  addressed  to  you 
on  the  subject  by  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen,  explanatory  of  the  wishes 
of  Her  Majesty's  Government — both  of  which  I  laid  before  the 
President  a  few  days  afterwards. 

"He  directed  me  to  say  that  he  concurred  entirely  in  the  expe- 
diency of  making  the  question  respecting  the  Oregon  Territory  a 
subject  of  immediate  attention  and  negotiation  between  the  two 
Governments.  He  had  already  formed  the  purpose  of  expressing 
this  opinion  in  his  message  to  Congress,  and  at  no  distant  day  a 
communication  will  be  made  to  the  Minister  of  the  United  States 
in  London. 

"I  pray  you  to  accept  the  renewed  assurance  of  my  distinguished 
consideration. 

"DANIEL  WEBSTER. 

"H.  S.  Fox,  Esq.,  etc.,  etc.,  etc." 

Two  dispatches  of  Edw.  Everett,  then  our  Minister  to  England, 
to  Daniel  Webster,  Secretary  of  State,  quoted  by  George  Bancroft 
in  Berlin  Arbitration  (p.  27),  are  to  the  same  purport,  as  follows: 

"London,  Oct.  10,  1842. 

"Sir:  Lord  Aberdeen,  in  the  conference  which  ensued  after  the 
exchange  of  the  ratifications,  observed  that  his  only  subject  of  re- 


242  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

gret  in  counection  witli  the  treaty  was,  that  the  boundary  between 
the  two  countries  on  the  l*acific  Ocean  had  not  been  provided  for; 
and  expressed  a  strong  wish  that  1  might  receive  instructions  on 
that  subject. 

^•EDWARD  EVERETT. 
"Daniel  Webster,  Esq., 
"Secretary  of  State." 

"London,  November  18,  1842. 

"Sir:  On  arriving  at  the  Foreign  Office  I  was  told  that  Lord 
Aberdeen  wished  to  see  me,  and  was  conducted  to  his  room.  He 
informed  me  that  he  wished  to  read  me  a  copy  of  a  dispatch  which 
he  had  addressed  to  Mr.  Fox,  directing  him  to  make  known  to  the 
President  the  strong  desire  of  Her  Majesty's  Government  to  engage, 
without  delay,  in  a  negotiation  for  the  settlement  of  the  boundary 
between  the  two  countries  on  the  Pacific  Ocean,  and  his  wish  that 
instructions  should  be  sent  to  me  for  that  purpose.  In  the  con- 
versation which  ensued,  he  dwelt  with  great  earnestness  on  the  dan- 
ger to  the  good  understanding  between  the  two  countries  so  happily 
established  by  the  treaty  of  Washington  to  be  apprehended  from 
leaving  this  question  in  its  present  unsettled  state. 

"EDWARD  EVERETT. 

"Daniel  Webster,  Esq., 
"Secretary  of  State." 

Returning  to  Doc.  2.  On  p.  141  is  a  letter  from  Mr.  Upshur  to 
Mr.  Pakenham,  date  February  26,  1844,  replying  to  his  of  February 
24,  1844,  and  making  an  appointment  to  meet  Mr.  Pakenham  "to- 
morrow at  11  o'clock  a.  m.  at  the  Department  of  State  to  confer 
with  him  on  the  Oregon  question,"  and  another  letter  of  Mr.  Paken- 
ham to  Mr.  Calhoun,  dated  July  22,  1844,  and  referring  to  this 
appointment,  and  to  Mr.  L^pshur's  death  within  a  few  days  of  the 
date  of  'Mv.  l*akenham's  note  of  February  24,  1844,  and  asking  for 
a  renewal  of  the  negotiations,  which  last  letter  marks  the  begin- 
ning of  the  negotiations  of  1844-45-46  on  the  Oregon  boundary  ques- 
tion, and  is  followed  by  the  protocols  of  that  negotiation,  the  first 
one  dated  August  23,  1844. 

How  did  it  happen  that  when  both  Governments  were  agreed  in 
October  and  November,  1842,  to  make  the  Oregon  question  "a  sub- 
ject of  immediate  attention,"  no  formal  negotiations  were  had  on 
the  subject  till  August  23,  1844? 

The  answer  is  readily  found  in  a  little  study  of  easily  accessible 
authorities. 

All  of  President  Harrison's  Cabinet,  after  his  death  on  April 
4,  1841,  continued  to  serve  under  Tyler  until  September  11,  1841, 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  243 

when,  except  Daniel  Webster,  they  all  resigned  because  President 
Tyler  had  vetoed  a  bill  passed  by  Congress  re-establishing  the 
United  States  Bank;  but  Webster  remained  Secretary  of  State,  in 
order  to  settle  the  northeastern  boundary,  which  was  accomplished 
August  9,  1842,  by  the  Webster-Ashburton  treaty. 

He  then  desired  to  retire  from  a  position  which  was  far  from 
pleasant  to  him,  as  he  was  one  of  the  greatest  leaders  of  the  Whig 
party,  and  President  Tyler  had  been  ''read  out"  of  that  party,  on 
account  of  his  veto  of  the  bank  bill;  and  in  order  to  furnish  him 
a  position  congenial  to  his  tastes  and  suited  to  his  talents,  it  was 
proposed  to  send  Edw.  Everett,  then  Minister  to  England,  as  Min- 
ister or  Commissioner  to  China  (where  we  had  not  before  had  a 
Minister),  and  then  send  Webster  as  Minister  to  England,  where 
it  was  expected  that  he  would  succeed  in  settling  the  question  of 
the  Oregon  boundary  satisfactorily. 

But  after  considerable  correspondence,  Everett  declined  to  ac- 
cept the  China  mission,  and  Caleb  Cushing  was  sent  instead,  and 
negotiated  the  first  treaty  ever  made  between  the  United  States 
and  China. 

As  Webster  could  not  honorably  displace  his  life-long  friend 
Everett  without  finding  him  some  other  place  satisfactory  to  him, 
and  as  no  such  place  was  open,  Webster  resigned  on  May  8,  1843, 
and  returned  to  private  life  till  re-elected  to  the  Senate,  where  his 
new  term  began  March  4,  1845. 

In  those  days  of  no  telegraphs,  and  few  railroads  and  ocean 
steamers,  correspondence  about  this  matter  took  much  time,  and 
while  it  was  going  on  no  such  delicate  and  difficult  negotiation  as 
that  about  the  Oregon  boundary  could  prudently  be  begun,  nor 
could  it  be,  after  Webster  resigned,  till  a  new  Secretary  of  State 
should  be  installed  and  given  time  to  become  familiar  with  the 
routine  of  the  office. 

After  Webster's  resignation,  Hugh  S.  Legare,  the  Attorney 
General,  acted  as  Secretary  of  State  ad  interim  from  May  9,  1843, 
to  June  20,  1843,  when  he  died  suddenly.  Then  William  S.  Der- 
rick (Chief  Clerk)  acted  as  Secretary  of  State  ad  interim,  June 
21  to  June  23,  1843.  Then  Abel  P.  Upshur,  Secretary  of  the  Navy, 
acted  as  Secretary  of  State  ad  interim  from  June  24  to  July  23, 
1843,  and  on  July  24  he  was  duly  commissioned  as  Secretary  of 
State. 

Less  than  a  month  afterwards  Mr.  Everett  wrote  Mr.  Upshur 
as  follows:     (Cf.  Berlin  Arbitration,  p.  28.) 


244  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

''(Confidential) 

"London,  Aug.  17,  1843. 

"Dear  Sir:  When  Lord  Aberdeen  spoke  of  instructing  Mr.  Fox 
on  the  Oregon  question,  he  added  an  expression  of  his  regret  that 
the  negotiation  should  fall  into  his  hands.  He  has  on  many  oc- 
casions expressed  a  wish  that  I  should  be  charged  with  the  nego- 
tiation. Could  I  hope  to  bring  it  to  a  successful  issue,  it  would 
of  course  be  very  agreeable;  but  it  seems  to  me  out  of  the  question 
to  carry  on  such  a  negotiation  anywhere  but  at  Washington. 

"EDWARD  EVERETT. 
"Hon.  A.  P.  Upshur." 

Immediately  following  this,  on  p.  28,  is  "Mr.  Upshur  to  Mr. 
Everett" : 

"Department  of  State, 
"Washington,    Oct.    9,    1843. 
"Sir: 

"The  President  directs  that  you  take  an  early  occasion  to  bring 
again  to  the  attention  of  Her  Majesty's  government  the  subject  of 
the  claims  of  the  two  countries  respectively  to  the  territory  west 
of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  The  difficulties  which  the  conflicting 
claims  of  Russia  to  a  portion  of  this  territory  have  heretofore  in- 
terposed are  now  happily  removed  by  the  treaty  of  April,  1824, 
which  defines  the  limits  within  which  that  power  engages  to  re- 
strict its  settlement;  so  that  the  questions  now  to  be  settled  rest 
exclusively  between  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States. 

"The  offer  of  the  49th  parallel  of  latitude,  although  it  has  once 
been  rejected,  may  be  again  tendered,  together  with  the  right  of 
navigating  the  Columbia  upon  equitable  terms.  Beyond  this  the 
President  is  not  now  prepared  to  go. 

''You  will  receive  herewith  the  necessary  powers  to  negotiate 
upon  the  subject.  If,  however,  the  British  Government  prefers 
that  the  negotiation  shall  be  conducted  in  Washington,  that  ar- 
rangement will  be  perfectly  agreeable  to  the  President. 

"A.  P.  UPSHUR. 
"Edward  Everett,  Esq." 

Immediately  following  this  (on  pp.  28-9)  is  "Mr.  Everett  to 
Mr.  Upshur: 

"(Confidential) 

"London,  Nov.   2,   1843. 

"Sir:  By  the  steamer  of  the  16th  October,  I  had  the  honor  to 
receive  your  dispatch  No.  62,  inclosing  a  full  power  from  the  Presi- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  245 

dent  to  treat  with  this  Government  for  the  adjustment  of  the  Ore- 
gon boundary,  and  containing  your  instructions  on  that  subject. 
I  lost  no  time  in  applying  for  an  interview  with  Lord  Aberdeen, 
and  saw  him  the  first  day  of  his  return  to  town.  On  apprising 
him  of  the  disposition  of  the  President  to  open  a  negotiation  on 
this  subject  at  London,  Lord  Aberdeen  informed  me  that  such  an 
arrangement  would  have  been  altogether  agreeable  to  him  if  some- 
what earlier  made,  and  reminded  me  that  he  had  very  often,  in 
the  course  of  the  last  winter,  expressed  the  wish  that  the  President 
would  authorize  me  to  treat  on  the  subject.  He  had,  however, 
lately  come  to  a  conclusion  and  taken  a  step  that  made  it  neces- 
sary to  treat  upon  the  subject  at  Washington:  this  was  the  recall 
of  Mr.  Fox  and  the  appointment  of  a  successor.  Among  the 
grounds  for  adopting  this  measure  was  the  belief  that  there  would 
be  decided  advantage  in  putting  the  management  of  this  subject 
into  new  hands,  and  consequently  that  had  been  and  would  be  as- 
signed as  a  leading  reason  for  the  contemplated  change.  This 
course,  he  said,  had  not  been  resolved  upon  till  they  had  entirely 
given  up  the  expectation  that  I  should  be  authorized  to  treat  on 
this  subject. 

''EDWARD  EVERETT. 
"A.  P.  Upshur,  Esq., 

''Secretary  of  State." 

Immediately  following  this,  on  p.  29,  is  another  dispatch  from 
Mr.  Everett  to  Mr.  Upshur,  dated  London,  November  14,  184.3, 
showing  that  the  British  Foreign  Office  lost  no  time  in  recalling 
Mr.  Fox  and  commissioning  Hon.  Richard  Pakenham  as  Minister 
at  Washington,  for  in  it  Everett  says  that  on  the  6th  inst.  Lord 
Aberdeen  (head  of  the  British  Foreign  Office  from  September  2, 
1841,  to  July  6,  1846),  had  requested  him  to  call  at  Argyll  House, 
Lord  Aberdeen's  town  residence;  and  that  he  had  done  so,  and 
had  had  "a  long  and  upon  the  whole  satisfactory  conversation  with 
Lord  Aberdeen,"  in  the  course  of  which  "he  told  me  that  he  had 
communicated  to  Mr.  Fox,  by  the  steamer  of  the  4th,  that  his  suc- 
cessor was  appointed." 

Pakenham  arrived  in  New  York  February  12,  1844,  on  the  Brit- 
ish sloop  of  war  Vestal,  of  26  guns,  in  27  days  from  Plymouth, 
England.     (Cf.  Niles'  Register,  Feb.  17,  1844.) 

Returning  now  to  House  Ex.  Doc.  2,  29th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.  On 
p.  140,  under  date  February  24,  1844,  Mr.  Pakenham  wrote  to  Mr. 
Upshur  that  he  had  been  instructed  "to  lose  no  time  in  entering 
into  communication  with  the  Secretary  of  State  of  the  United 
States  upon  the  subject  of  Oregon,  because  "Upon  no  subject  of 
difference  between  the  two  Governments  was  the  British  Govern- 


246  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

ment  more  anxious  to  come  to  an  early  and  satisfactory  arrange- 
ment than  that  relating  to  the  Oregon  or  Columbia  territory,"  and 
asking  for  an  appointment  to  begin  negotiations. 

Idem  (p.  141)  Mr.  Upshur  replied  to  Mr.  Pakenham,  under 
date  of  February  20,  1844,  saying:  "The  undersigned  has  the 
honor  to  inform  Mr.  Pakenham  that  he  will  receive  him  for  that 
purpose,  at  the  Department  of  State,  tomorrow  at  11  a.  m." 

At  last  then  it  seemed  as  though  negotiations  would  speedily 
be  fully  entered  upon,  but  on  February  28,  1844,  Mr.  Upshur,  with 
Mr.  Gilmer,  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  and  several  others,  were  in- 
stantly killed  by  the  exj)losion  of  a  great  gun  called  the  Peace- 
maker on  board  the  United  States  ship  of  war  Princeton, 

Thus  again  our  State  Department  was  vacant,  and  although 
that  brilliant  statesman  John  C.  Calhoun  was  nominated  and  con- 
firmed Secretary  of  State  March  6,  1844,  and  entered  upon  the 
duties  of  the  ottice  April  1,  1844,  Mr.  Pakenham,  appreciating  the 
necessity  of  allowing  the  new  Secretary  to  become  well  wonted  to 
his  office  before  attempting  to  carry  on  any  negotiation  about  so 
important,  and  delicate,  and  complicated  a  subject  as  the  Oregon 
boundary,  did  not  address  him  upon  it  till  he  wrote  the  following 
letter : 

"Washington,  July  22,  1844. 

"Sir:  In  the  archives  of  the  Department  of  State  will  be  found 
a  note  which  I  had  the  honor  to  address,  on  the  24th  February 
last,  to  the  late  Mr.  Upshur,  expressing  the  desire  of  Her  Majesty's 
Government  to  conclude  with  the  Government  of  the  United  States 
a  satisfactory  arrangement  respecting  the  boundary  of  the  Oregon 
or  Columbia  territory. 

"The  lamented  death  of  Mr.  Upshur,  which  occurred  within  a 
few  days  after  the  date  of  that  note,  the  interval  which  took  place 
between  that  event  and  the  appointment  of  a  successor,  and  the 
urgency  and  importance  of  various  matters  which  offered  them- 
selves to  your  attention  immediately  after  your  accession  to  office, 
sufficiently  explain  why  it  has  not  hitherto  been  in  the  power  of 
your  Government,  sir,  to  attend  to  the  important  matter  to  which 
I  refer. 

"But  the  session  of  Congress  having  been  brought  to  a  close, 
and  the  present  being  the  season  of  the  year  when  the  least  public 
business  is  usually  transacted,  it  occurs  to  me  that  you  may  now 
feel  at  leisure  to  proceed  to  the  consideration  of  that  subject.  At 
all  events,  it  becomes  my  duty  to  recall  it  to  your  recollection,  and 
to  re})eat  the  earnest  desire  of  Her  Majesty's  Government,  that  a 
question  on  which  so  much  interest  is  felt  in  both  countries  should 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  247 

be  disposed  of  at  the  earliest  moment  consistent  with  the  conveni- 
ence of  the  Government  of  the  United  States. 

''I  have  the  honor  to  be,  with  high  consideration,  sir,  your  obe- 
dient servant, 

"R.  PAKENHAM. 
"Hon.  John  C.  Calhoun,  etc." 

To  this  Mr.  Calhoun  replied  as  follows: 

"Department  of  State. 

"Washington,  August  22,  1844. 

"Sir:  The  various  subjects  which  necessarily  claimed  my  at- 
tention on  entering  on  the  duties  of  my  office  have  heretofore,  as 
you  justly  suppose  in  your  note  of  the  22d  of  July  last,  prevented 
me  from  appointing  a  time  to  confer  with  you,  and  enter  on  the 
negotiations  in  reference  to  the  Oregon  territory. 

"These  have,  at  length,  been  dispatched,  and,  in  reply  to  the 
note  which  you  did  me  the  honor  to  address  to  me  of  the  date 
above  mentioned,  I  have  to  inform  you  that  I  am  now  ready  to 
enter  on  the  negotiation,  and  for  that  purpose  propose  a  confer- 
ence tomorrow  at  1  o'clock  p.  m.,  at  the  Department  of  State,  if 
perfectly  convenient  to  you;  but,  if  not,  at  any  other  (place)  which 
it  may  suit  your  convenience  to  appoint. 

"The  Government  of  the  United  States  participates  in  the 
anxious  desire  of  that  of  Great  Britain,  that  the  subject  may  be 
early  and  satisfactorily  arranged. 

"I  have  the  honor  to  be,  with  high  consideration,  sir,  your  obe- 
dient servant, 

"J.  C.  CALHOUN. 
"The  Right  Hon.  R.  Pakenham,  etc.,  etc.,  etc." 

To  this  Mr.  Pakenham  replied  as  follows: 

"Washington,  Aug.  22,  1844. 

"Sir:  I  have  had  the  honor  to  receive  your  note  of  this  morn- 
ing date,  in  which  you  signify  your  readiness  to  enter  on  the  nego- 
tiation in  reference  to  the  Oregon  territory,  proposing  to  me  to 
meet  you  in  conference  on  that  subject  tomorrow  at  1  o'clock. 

"In  reply,  I  have  the  honor  to  acquaint  you  that  I  shall  have 
great  pleasure  in  waiting  on  you,  at  the  Department  of  State,  at 
the  hour  proposed. 

"Be  pleased  to  accept  the  assurance  of  any  distinguished  con- 
sideration. 

"R.  PAKENHAM. 
"Hon.  John  C.  Calhoun,  etc.,  etc.,  etc." 


248  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

And  thus,  at  last,  almost  two  years  alter  Lord  Aberdeen  had 
expressed  the  desire  of  England  to  ''immediately  take  it  up  and 
settle  it  speedily,"  the  final  negotiation  for  the  settlement  of  the 
Oregon  boundary  line  was  really  started. 

This  matter  has  been  stated  thus  fully  because  one  of  the  per- 
sistent contentions  of  various  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Legend 
has  been  that  President  Tyler  promised  Whitman,  in  March,  1843, 
*that  there  should  be  no  farther  negotiations  about  Oregon  till  he 
should  have  time  to  lead  a  migration  there  with  wagons.  (Cf.  Ex- 
tract from  a  lecture  by  Kev.  II.  H.  Spalding  in  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  No. 
37,  41st  Cong.,  3d  Sess.  (p.  22)  ;  Gray's  "History  of  Oregon"  (p. 
290);  Rev.  M.  Eells'  "Indian  Missions"  (p.  174);  Rev.  M.  Eells' 
"Reply  to  Prof.  Bourne"  (pp.  94-5)  ;  Mrs.  Eva  Emery  Dye's  "Mc- 
Louglilin  and  Old  Oregon"  (p.  235)  ;  Craighead's  "Story  of  Marcus 
Whitman"  (p.  (17)  ;  Nixon's  "How  Marcus  Whitman  Saved  Oregon" 
(p.  130)  ;  Mowry's  "Marcus  Whitman  and  the  Early  Days  of  Ore- 
gon"  (p.  171). 

There  is  not  the  slightest  probability  that  Whitman  ever  had 
any  interview  with  President  Tyler  and  Secretary  Webster.  (Cf. 
Chapter  VII.,  Part  2,  i)ifra.)  Upshur's  dispatch  to  Mr.  Webster, 
August  9,  1843  (which  would  unquestionably  have  resulted  in  re- 
opening formal  negotiations  on  the  Oregon  boundary  in  November, 
1843,  in  London,  had  not  the  British  Government,  tired  of  the  long 
delay,  resolved  to  recall  Mr.  Henry  S.  Fox  [their  Minister  at  Wash- 
ington from  October  2,  1835,  to  December  14,  1843]  and  transfer 
the  negotiation  to  Washington),  is  conclusive  proof  that  there  was 
no  agreement  by  President  Tyler  to  delay  negotiations  on  the  Ore- 
gon boundary  till  news  should  be  received  of  the  arrival  of  the  1843 
migration,  for  the  news  of  the  arrival  of  that  migration  at  Fort 
Hall  was  not  received  at  St.  Louis  till  November  30,  1843  (when 
the  11  men  sent  back  from  Fort  Hall  by  Fremont  arrived  there, 
having  lost  the  letters  sent  by  Fremont,  but  having  brought  through 
and  left  at  Weston,  Mo.,  for  publication  some  letters  from  the  mi- 
gration). (Cf.  for  the  sending  back  of  these  men  on  September  22, 
1843,  p.  162  of  Fremont's  First  and  Second  Exploring  Expeditions, 
being  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  174,  28th  Cong.,  2d  Sess. ;  for  the  arrival  of  the 
party  at  St.  Louis,  the  extract  from  St.  Louis  Gazette,  quoted  in 
Niles'  Register  December  10,  1843.) 

While  there  have  been  claims  made  that  information  was  re- 
ceived in  Washington  in  January,  1844,  of  the  safe  arrival  at  their 
destination  of  the  1843  migration,  no  proof  to  sustain  this  wholly 
improbable  claim  has  been  ])roduced,  and  the  earliest  news  of  their 
ai-rival  that  I  have  been  able  to  find  is  in  the  following  two  ex- 
tracts from  Niles'  Register: 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  249 

First.  Issue  of  April  13,  1844  (p.  101),  "Extracts  from  a  let- 
ter dated  October  20,  1843,  at  Wallamette  Falls — The  population 
of  this  country,  exclusive  of  the  party  of  700  now  coming  in  from 
the  States,  has  increased  at  least  one-third  during  the  past  year." 
This  is  credited  to  the  Newburyport  Herald,  but  without  date.  The 
date  of  the  letter  shows  that  it  must  have  been  written  when  only 
those  had  arrived  in  the  Willamette  Valley  who  left  the  main  body 
of  the  migration  at  Fort  Hall,  and  went  ahead  with  saddle  and 
pack  horses. 

Second.  Issue  of  April  20,  1844  (p.  113),  'The  Oregon.  The 
Emigrants."  "A  letter  from  the  Oregon  emigrants  was  received 
at  Platte  City,  Mo.,  on  the  2d  inst.,  announcing  the  safe  arrival  of 
the  emigrating  company,  and  confirming  the  intelligence  formerly 
received.  A  history  of  the  expedition  will  be  published  in  St.  Louis 
next  July." 

A  very  complete  record  of  the  final  negotiations  on  the  Oregon 
boundary  is  to  be  found  in  (a)  Ex.  Doc.  No.  2,  29th  Cong.,  1st 
Sess.,  which  gives  the  protocols  of  the  six  conferences  between 
Pakenham  and  Calhoun  (our  Secretary  of  State  from  March  6, 
1844,  to  March  5,  1845),  held  on  August  23,  August  26,  September 
2,  September  12,  September  20  and  September  24,  1844;  and  the 
seventh  conference  between  Pakenham  and  Buchanan  (our  Secre- 
tary of  State  from  March  5,  1845,  to  March  7,  1849),  held  July  16, 
1845;  and  46  pages  of  the  "statements"  of  the  respective  negotia- 
tors which  accompanied  the  protocols. 

(b)  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  No.  489,  29th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  which  in  51 
pages  gives  the  draft  of  the  treaty  of  1846,  as  submitted  to  the 
Senate  by  the  President  for  their  advice  as  to  whether  or  not  it 
should  be  accepted;  the  proceedings  of  the  Senate  thereon,  ending 
with  a  recommendation  to  the  President  to  accept  the  treaty, 
adopted  by  38  to  12  on  June  12,  1846;  the  treaty  itself,  as  finally 
ratified  on  June  18,  1846,  by  41  to  14,  with  the  proceedings  of  the 
Senate  thereon ;  and  the  remainder  of  the  correspondence  accom- 
panying the  treaty,  including  that  accompanying  the  Joint  Resolu- 
tion of  the  two  Houses  of  Congress,  approved  April  27,  1846,  au- 
thorizing the  President  in  his  discretion  to  give  the  twelve  months' 
notice  to  Great  Britain  of  our  desire  to  abrogate  the  treaty  of  1827, 
which  notice  was  given  by  the  President  on  April  28,  1846,  and  its 
receipt  acknowledged  by  Lord  Aberdeen  on  May  21,  1846. 

(c)  "Berlin  Arbitration,"  pp.  27-55.  This  is  specially  valuable 
because  it  gives  the  despatches  of  Mr.  Everett  to  Webster,  Upshur 
and  Calhoun,  and  also  some  despatches  of  Mr.  McLane  to  Buchanan 
which  are  not  given  at  all  in  Doc.  No.  489,  and  supplies  omitted 
parts  of  some  of  those  which  are  in  that  document. 


250  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

In  the  negotiations  of  1823-24  Great  Jiritain  had  offered  us  the 
line  of  49  degrees  to  the  most  northeasterly  branch  of  the  Columbia, 
known  as  McGillivrav's  Kiver,  and  thence  that  stream  and  the  Co- 
lumbia to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  with  the  navigation  of  the  Columbia 
perpetually  free  to  both  nations.  (Cf.  Protocol  of  the  23d  Confer- 
ence, July  23,  1824 ;  Doc.  390,  American  State  Papers,  Foreign  Re- 
lations, Vol.  V.)  In  the  negotiations  of  182G-7  Great  Britain  had 
offered  in  addition  to  the  above  to  allow  us  a  territory  entirely  de- 
tached from  all  our  other  possessions,  embracing  the  greater  part 
of  the  peninsula  between  the  waters  of  Puget's  Sound  and  the 
Pacific,  with  a  further  provision  that  ^'No  works  should  at  any 
time  be  erected  at  the  entrance  of  the  river  Columbia,  or  ui)on  the 
banks  of  the  same,  that  might  be  calculated  to  impede  or  hinder  the 
free  navigation  thereof  by  the  vessels  or  boats  of  either  party." 
(Cf.  Protocol  of  Third  Conference,  Dec.  1,  1826,  in  Doc.  458,  Vol. 
VI.,  American  State  Papers,  Foreign  Kel.)  As  we  have  seen  Lord 
Ashburton  came  over  in  1842,  "with  specific  and  detailed  instruc- 
tions" to  renew  the  proposition  of  1826,  but  found  Webster  and 
Tyler  insistent  on  ''No  line  south  of  the  49th  degree  as  a  negotiable, 
boundary  line  for  the  United  States,"  and  as  his  instructions  posi- 
tively forbade  his  acceptance  of  that  line,  Oregon  was  left  out  of 
the  Ashburton  treaty. 

At  the  second  conference  between  Pakenham  and  Calhoun,  Au- 
gust 26,  1844,  the  former  renewed  the  British  offer  of  December  1, 
1826,  and  in  addition  "To  make  free  to  the  United  States  any  port 
or  ports  which  the  United  States  Government  might  desire  either 
on  the  main  land  or  on  Vancouver's  Island,  south  of  latitude  49 
degrees."  This  Mr.  Calhoun  at  once  declined.  (Cf.  House  Ex.  Doc. 
2,  29th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  pp.  143,  144  and  146.) 

Mr.  Benton  ("Thirty  Years'  View,"  Vol.  II,  p.  661)  says:  "Mr. 
Calhoun,  rejecting  the  usual  arts  of  diplomacy,  which  holds  in  re- 
serve the  ultimate  and  true  offer  while  putting  forward  fictitious 
ones  for  experiment,  went  at  once  to  his  ultimatum,  and  proposed 
the  continuation  of  the  parallel  of  the  49th  degree  of  north  latitude 
.  .  .  to  the  Pacific  Ocean.  Mr.  Pakenham  declined  this  propo- 
sition in  the  part  that  carried  the  line  to  the  ocean,  but  offered  to 
continue  it  from  the  summit  of  the  mountains  to  the  Columbia 
River,  a  distance  of  some  300  miles ;  and  then  follow  the  river  to  the 
ocean." 

Mr.  Benton  is  entirely  in  error  in  saying  that  Calhoun  "went 
at  once  to  his  ultimatum"  with  an  offer  of  49  degrees  to  the  Pacific. 
The  records  of  the  negotiation  show  that  neither  "at  once"  nor  at 
any  time  during  this  negotiation  did  ^Ir.  Calhoun  offer  either  49 
degrees  to  the  Pacific,  or  any  other  line  for  a  boundary.     The  rea- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  251 

son  for  this  is  easily  found  by  attention  to  the  political  conditions 
of  the  time. 

May  1,  1844,  the  Whig  National  Convention  had  met  at  Balti- 
more and  unanimously  nominated  Henry  Clay  for  President  and 
Theodore  Frelinghuysen  for  Vice-President,  and  adopted  a  short 
platform  entirely  ignoring  the  questions  of  Texas  and  Oregon. 

The  Southern  leaders,  who  then  completely  dominated  the  Demo- 
cratic party,  and  who  were  determined  to  annex  Texas  at  any  cost, 
knowing  well  the  rising  opposition  in  the  North  to  any  farther  ex- 
tension of  slavery,  saw  in  far  away  Oregon  a  counterpoise  to  Texas, 
and  knowing  that  although  Oregon  had  been  known  for  a  dozen 
years  or  more  to  be  easily  enough  accessible  by  wagon,  yet  its  re- 
moteness would  not  allow  of  its  being  peopled  rapidly  enough  to 
have  it  admitted  as  a  State  for  a  good  many  years  (as  a  matter  of 
fact  it  was  not  admitted  as  a  State  till  February  14,  1859),  while 
Texas  would  come  in  as  a  State  with  two  Senators  at  once  (it  was 
admitted  December  29,  1845),  and  a  chance  of  dividing  it  later  into 
three  or  four  States,  with  a  corresponding  number  of  Senators  and 
Representatives,  and  that  Oregon  was  so  far  north  of  Mason  and 
Dixon's  line  and  the  Missouri  Compromise  line  that  slavery  would 
never  go  there,  adroitly  linked  the  two  together,  and  in  the  Demo- 
cratic National  Convention,  held  at  Baltimore  May  28,  29  and  30, 
1844,  having  by  the  two-thirds  rule  defeated  Van  Buren,  who  had 
151  out  of  a  total  of  266  votes  on  the  first  ballot,  and  in  the  first 
seven  ballots  killed  ofi'  all  the  other  prominent  candidates,  on  the 
eighth  ballot  gave  44  votes  to  James  K.  Polk,  who  had  received  no 
votes  on  the  first  seven  ballots,  and  on  the  ninth  ballot  nominated 
him — the  first  of  the  ''dark  horses"  to  make  a  Presidential  race — 
and  put  the  following  plank  into  their  platform: 

"Resolved:  That  our  title  to  the  whole  of  the  territory  of  Ore- 
gon is  clear  and  unquestionable;  that  no  portion  of  the  same  ought 
to  be  surrendered  to  England  or  apy  other  power;  and  that  the 
reoccupation  of  Oregon  and  the  reannexation  of  Texas  at  the  earli- 
est practicable  period  are  great  American  measures,  which  this  con- 
vention recommends  to  the  cordial  support  of  the  Democracy  of 
the  Union." 

Oregon  first,  and  thirty-eight  words  specially  to  Oregon,  and 
only  4  to  Texas!  Was  ever  anything  more  ingeniously  contrived 
to  bamboozle  the  average  voter?  ''The  whole  of  Oregon"  was  uni- 
versally understood  to  mean  Oregon  as  far  north  as  54  degrees  and 
40  minutes,  and  forthwith  began  the  notorious  "fifty-four  forty  or 
fight"  campaign,  which  resulted  in  the  election  of  Polk. 

As  the  Conference  between  Pakenham  and  Calhoun  began  in 
the  midst  of  this  campaign,  and  ended  before  the  election,  it  can 
easily  be  seen  that  Calhoun  would  not  make  any  proposition  for 


252  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

a  definite  line,  for  to  have  proposed  the  line  of  54  deg.  and  40  min. 
would  have  certainly  resulted  in  its  immediate  rejection  by  Paken- 
ham,  while  if  he  had  offered  40  degrees  amid  all  the  heat  and  fury 
of  a  political  campaign  in  which  his  own  party  was  shouting  for 
'"fifty-four  forty  or  fight,"  and  bitterly  denouncing  Clay,  the  Whig 
nominee  for  the  Presidency,  as  having  "taken  the  British  against 
the  American  side"  by  offering  49  degrees  in  1826,  he  would  have 
greatly  strengthened  the  Whigs  and  weakened  his  own  party,  and 
though  personally  he  did  not  favor  the  "fift}' four  forty  or  fight" 
policy,  and  would  have  been  glad  to  have  settled  the  controversy 
with  49  degrees  as  the  boundary  if  there  had  been  no  Presidential 
campaign  in  progress,  he  was  too  intense  a  partisan  to  be  willing  to 
imperil  Polk's  election  by  proposing  that  line  in  the  most  critical 
period  of  the  1844  campaign. 

Whoever  will  read  in  Ex.  Doc.  No.  2  the  statements  that  passed 
between  these  two  negotiators,  viz.,  Calhoun  to  Pakenham,  date 
September  3,  1844 ;  Pakenham  to  Calhoun,  date  September  12,  1844 ; 
and  Calhoun  to  Pakenham,  September  20,  1844 ;  will  find  them  very 
forceful  presentations  of  the  claims  of  their  respective  Govern- 
ments, but  presenting  nothing  new  (since  the  whole  subject  had 
been  thoroughly  gone  over  by  quite  as  able  men  in  the  negotiations 
of  1823-4  and  182G-7),  except  a  fuller  statement  than  Gallatin  made, 
November  25,  182G,  of  the  fact  that  by  the  Third  Article  of  the 
Treat\'  of  1818,  and  by  its  renewal  by  the  Treaty  of  1827,  it  was  im- 
possible that  the  trading  posts  and  other  settlements  made  in  Ore- 
gon by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  could  in  any  degree  strengthen  the 
British  claim  to  it  (which  Benton  and  the  ''Oregon  jingoes"  were 
constantly  asserting  they  could  do),  but  with  no  offer  by  Calhoun 
of  a  definite  boundary  line. 

Pakenham's  "statement"  of  September  12,  1844,  concludes  as 
follows: 

''The  undersigned  believes  that  he  has  now  noticed  all  the 
arguments  advanced  by  the  American  plenipotentiary,  in  order  to 
show  that  the  Ignited  States  are  fairly  entitled  to  the  entire  region 
drained  by  the  Columbia  river.  He  sincerely  regrets  that  their 
views  on  this  subject  should  differ  in  so  many  essential  respects. 

"It  remains  for  him  to  request  that  as  the  American  plenipo- 
tentiary declines  the  proposal  offered  on  the  part  of  Great  Britain, 
he  will  have  the  goodness  to  state  what  arrangements  he  is,  on  the 
part  of  the  United  States,  prepared  to  jjropose  for  an  equitable 
adjustment  of  the  question ;  and  more  especially  that  he  will  have 
the  goodness  to  define  the  nature  and  extent  of  the  claims  which 
the  I^^nited  States  may  have  to  other  portions  of  the  territory,  to 
which  allusion  is  made  in  the  concluding  part  of  his'  statement,  as 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  253 

it  is  obvious  that  no  arrangement  can  be  made  with  respect  to  a 
portion  of  the  territory  in  dispute  while  a  claim  is  reserved  to  any 
portion  of  the  remainder. 

"The  undersigned,  British  plenipotentiary,  has  the  honor  to  re- 
new to  the  American  plenipotentiary  the  assurance  of  his  high  con- 
sideration. 

"R.  PAKENHAM." 
(Cf.  House  Ex.  Doc.  2,  p.  158.) 

Mr.  Calhoun's  reply  to  this,  dated  September  20,  1844,  is  a  gen- 
eral discussion  of  the  "statement"  of  Mr.  Pakenham,  but  the  only 
allusion  in  it  to  Mr.  Pakenham's  request  above  quoted  is  the  fol- 
lowing very  vague  statement,  in  its  concluding  paragraph: 

"In  reply  to  the  request  of  the  British  plenipotentiary,  that 
the  undersigned  should  define  the  nature  and  extent  of  the  claims 
which  the  United  States  have  to  the  other  portions  of  the  terri- 
tory, and  to  which  allusion  is  made  in  the  concluding  part  of  state- 
ment A,  he  has  the  honor  to  inform  him,  in  general  terms,  that 
they  are  derived  from  Spain  by  the  Florida  treaty,  and  are  founded 
on  the  discoveries  and  exploration  of  her  navigators;  and  which 
they  must  regard  as  giving  them  a  right  to  the  extent  to  which 
they  can  be  established,  unless  a  better  can  be  opposed. 

"J.  C.  CALHOUN. 
"The  Right  Hon.  Richard  Pakenham,  etc.,  etc.,  etc." 

(Cf.  House  Ex.  Doc.  2,  p.  161.) 

Plainly  Mr.  Calhoun,  instead  of  moving  on  towards  any  definite 
proposition  about  a  boundary  line,  was  merely  "marking  time," 
and  waiting  for  the  result  of  the  election. 

Had  Mr.  Clay  been  elected,  there  is  every  probability  that  Mr. 
Calhoun  (who  never  had  endorsed  the  "fifty-four  forty  or  fight" 
humbug)  would  have  offered  again  49  degrees  to  the  coast,  but 
when  the  returns  showed  Polk's  election,  very  naturally  Calhoun, 
who  cared  vastly  more  about  Texas  than  about  Oregon,  bent  his 
energies  towards  the  annexation  of  the  "Lone  Star  Republic,"  and 
determined  to  leave  Polk's  Administration  to  get  out  of  their  "fifty- 
four  forty  or  fight"  dilemma  as  best  they  might. 

On  January  15,  1845,  Mr.  Pakenham,  having  received  no  propo- 
sition for  a  boundary  line  (though  his  own  proposition  had  been 
rejected  more  than  four  and  a  half  months  before),  wrote  to  Mr. 
Calhoun  that,  "Considering  on  the  one  hand  the  impatience  which 
is  manifested  in  the  United  States  for  a  settlement  of  this  ques- 
tion, and  on  the  other  the  length  of  time  which  would  probably 
be  still  required  to  effect  a  satisfactory  adjustment  of  it  between 


254  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

the  two  Governments,  it  has  occurred  to  ller  Majesty's  Govern- 
ment that,  under  such  circumstances,  no  more  fair  or  honorable 
mode  of  settling  the  question  could  be  adopted  than  that  of  arbi- 
tration. 

''This  proposition  I  am  accordingly  authorized  to  offer  for  the 
consideration  of  the  Government  of  the  United  States." 

On  January  21,  1845,  Mr.  Calhoun  replied,  declining  to  arbi- 
trate, but  expressing  "the  hope  that  the  question  may  be  settled  by 
the  negotiation  now  pending  between  the  two  countries"  (Cf. 
House  Ex.  Doc.  2,  p.  102),  and  with  this  ended  the  connection  of 
Calhoun  and  the  Tyler  Administration  with  the  Oregon  negotia- 
tion. 

President  Polk's  Inaugural  Address,  March  4,  1845,  after  dis- 
cussing the  Texas  question  at  length,  continued  as  follows:  "Nor 
will  it  become  in  a  less  degree  my  duty  to  assert  aud  maintain  by 
all  constitutional  means  the  right  of  the  United  States  to  that 
portion  of  our  territory  which  lies  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

"Our  title  to  the  country  of  the  Oregon  is  clear  and  unques- 
tionable, and  already  are  our  people  preparing  to  perfect  that  title 
by  occuj)ying  it  with  their  wives  and  children." 

There  is  here  no  claim  of  "fifty-four  forty  or  fight,"  and  a  plain 
opening  of  a  path  for  retreat  from  that  position;  nevertheless,  fol- 
lowing on  the  heels  of  all  the  fuss  and  fury  of  the  "fifty-four  forty 
or  fight"  campaign,  and  the  fiery  speeches  of  the  "Oregon  jingoes" 
in  both  Houses  of  Congress  in  the  first  and  second  sessions  of  the 
28th  Congress,  this  passage  in  the  Inaugural  produced  great  un- 
easiness and  fear  of  war  in  England,  where  the  ability  of  the  aver- 
age American  ])oliticians,  when  they  have  carried  the  election,  to 
split  the  planks  of  the  platform  on  which  they  have  merely  stood 
to  get  the  offices  into  kindling  wood  for  the  bonfires  over  their  vic- 
tory, and  to  "eat  their  own  words"  without  even  making  a  wry 
face  over  the  act  is  less  thoroughly  understood  than  in  this  country. 

Two  articles,  at  this  time,  in  two  of  the  most  influential  publi- 
cations in  England,  the  London  Examiner  and  the  Edinburgh  Re- 
view, are  very  interesting  in  this  connection,  as  showing  the  state 
of  England's  opinion  on  the  value  of  Oregon,  the  folly  of  going  to 
war  about  the  whole  or  any  part  of  it,  and  the  view  of  the  fair- 
minded  Englishman  as  to  a  proper  division  of  the  country  between 
the  two  nations. 

From  the  Examiner  article  I  will  quote  very  fully;  but  as  the 
Edinburgh  Revieiv  article  is  a  lengthy  review  of  ten  books — includ- 
ing "American  State  Papers,"  "Farnham's  Travels,"  "Greenhow's 
History  of  Oregon  and  California"  (London  Edition)  ;  and  "Narra- 
tive of  United   States    Exploring    Expedition,"  by  Lieut.  Charles 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  255 

Wilkes,  5  vols. — I  must  summarize  it,  and  only  make  a  few  brief 
quotations  from  it. 

(From  London  Examiner,  April  26,  1845:) 

"THE  OREGON  QUESTION. 

"The  maximum  claim  of  England  and  the  minimum  claim 
of  America  is  the  Columbia;  the  maximum  of  America  and  the 
minimum  of  England  is  the  49th.  If  each  were  mad  enough  to  in- 
sist on  its  maximum,  collision  must  ensue. 

"The  best  mode  of  arrangement  would  be  that  which  has  been 
offered  by  England,  and,  though  not  accepted,  not  definitely  re- 
jected by  America — arbitration.  The  dispute  after  all  is  a  mere 
question  of  national  pride,  and  the  pride  of  neither  nation  could 
be  offended  by  submission  to  an  award.  If  that  award  were  to  give 
the  whole  country  down  to  the  Mexican  frontier  to  England,  Amer- 
ica would  suffer  no  real  loss.  She  would  only  be  prevented  from 
wasting  her  resources  and  violating  her  constitution  in  the  acquisi- 
tion and  defense  of  what  must,  in  effect,  be  a  distant  colony. 

"If  the  award  were  to  give  the  whole  territory  to  America,  the 
value  of  the  monopoly  enjoyed  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  would  be 
a  little  diminished.  But  as  that  monopoly  is  injurious  to  the  Eng- 
lish people,  we  should  not  bitterly  grieve  at  an  event  which  would 
reduce  the  value  of  the  company's  stock  one  per  cent. 

"If  arbitration  be  unattainable,  the  only  mode  of  accommoda- 
tion is  mutual  concession,  and  the  terms  which  we  suggest  for  that 
mutual  concession  are  those  which,  if  we  were  arbitrators,  we 
should  award,  namely,  that  the  boundary  line  should  be  the  49th 
degree  until  it  meets  the  Pacific,  and  then  the  Straits  of  Fuca  to 
the  sea.  Our  only  claim  rests  on  contiguity,  and  this  would  give 
us  more  than  mere  contiguity  entitles  us  to.  This  would  give  us 
the  whole  of  Vancouver's  Island,  and  it  would  give  us  an  abundance 
of  good  harbors.  It  would  also  give  us  the  country  which  is  best 
for  the  purposes  for  which  we  use  it,  the  fur  trade.  The  furs  to 
the  north  of  the  49th  degree  are  better  and  more  abundant  than 
those  to  the  south.  All  balancing,  however,  of  the  positive  advan- 
tages to  be  obtained  by  the  one  nation  or  by  the  other  on  a  parti- 
tion is  mere  childishness.  The  interruption  of  confidence  for  a 
single  week  costs  more  than  the  whole  country  is  worth.  A  mere 
armament,  though  followed  by  accommodation,  would  cost  more 
than  a  thousand  times  its  value.  What  proportion,  therefore,  does 
it  bear  to  a  war?" 

The  Edinburgh  Revieiv  article  was  published  in  the  July,  1845, 
number  and  contains  about  15,000  words. 


256  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

It  was  so  eminently  fair  that  the  New  York  Tribune  Almanac 
for  1846  printed  it  in  inll,  prefaced  by  the  following  paragraph: 

"OREGON."     "OUR    RIGHTFUL    NORTHWESTERN 
BOUNDARY." 

"Decidedly  the  clearest  and  best  account  we  have  seen  of  the 
Oregon  Boundary  controversy  is  given  in  the  following  article  from 
the  Edinburgh  Review  of  July  last : 

"So  lucid,  so  candid,  so  truthful  is  it,  that  the  British  newspaper 
press  (the  London  Times  especially)  denounce  it  as  a  virtual  sur- 
render of  all  in  dispute  that  is  material,  as  in  truth  it  is.  The 
boundary  proposed  by  the  Review  is  that  proposed  and  urged  by  our 
Government  at  different  times,  but  always  rejected  by  Great  Britain. 

"We  think  the  Review  demonstrates  that  it  is  the  proper  and 
just  one." 

The  article  discusses  the  fur  trade  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s 
management  of  it,  and  their  policy  in  dealing  with  the  Indians, 
says  that  Oregon  is  of  little  worth  agriculturally,  and  that  for  the 
fur  trade  (which  it  thinks  the  chief  value  of  the  country),  the  part 
north  of  40  degrees  is  much  more  valuable  than  the  part  south  of 
that  parallel,  discusses  (from  the  British  standpoint  of  course) 
the  question  of  title  to  the  country,  and  declares  that  neither  Eng- 
land nor  the  United  States  has  a  perfect  title,  and  says  "The  great 
error  of  all  parties  has  been  the  importance  attached  to  Oregon. 
But,  assuming  it  to  be  of  any  value,  the  Americans  cannot  be  ex- 
pected to  remain  satisfied  with  an  arrangement  which,  professing 
to  give  them  equal  rights,  practically  excludes  them"  {i.  e.,  from 
the  fur  trade).  It  concludes  as  follows:  "And  we  firmly  believe 
in  Mr.  Gallatin's  prophecy"  (in  the  1826-7  negotiations),  "that 
under  whatever  nominal  sovereignty  Oregon  may  be  placed,  what- 
ever its  ultimate  destinies  may  be,  it  will  almost  exclusively  be 
peopled  by  the  surplus  population  of  the  United  States.  The  ne- 
gotiation for  partition  is  now  resumed,  and  we  trust  with  a  fair 
prospect  of  success.  It  is  much  that  the  real  worthlessness  of  the 
country  has  been  established.  All  that  any  prudent  Englishman 
or  American  can  wish  is,  that  the  controversy  should  be  speedily 
and  honorably  settled.  A  week's  interruption  of  confidence — such, 
for  instance,  as  followed  the  reception  of  Mr.  Polk's  inaugural 
speech — costs  each  party  twenty  times  the  value  of  the  matter  in 
dispute. 

"The  obvious  course  is  to  refer  the  whole  question  to  arbitra- 
tion. The  decision  of  an  arbitrator  necessarily  sjives  the  honor 
of  each  party,  and  in  the  present  case  there  is  nothing  else  to  con- 
tend for.     .     .     ."     The  earnest  plea  for  arbitration  concludes  as 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  257 

follows:  "She"  {i.  e.,  the  United  States)  "cannot  deny  that  we 
honestly  believe  it  to  be  matter  of  controversy;  and  if  a  fourth 
negotiation  should  fail,  she  is  bound  by  friendship,  by  prudence, 
and  by  regard  to  the  welfare  of  the  whole  civilized  world  to  allow 
it  to  be  settled  by  arbitration.  Our  readers  have  perhaps  a  right 
to  ask  what,  in  our  opinion,  the  decision  of  an  honest  arbitrator 
would  be?  We  think  we  have  supplied  premises  from  which  it 
may  be  inferred.  We  have  shown  that  no  nation  now  possesses 
any  title,  perfect  or  imperfect,  by  discovery,  by  settlement,  by 
treaty,  or  by  prescription.  We  have  shown,  too,  that  no  nation 
possesses  a  perfect  title  by  contiguity;  and  we  have  shown  that  an 
imperfect  title  by  contiguity  to  the  portion  which  lies  north  of 
the  4:9th  parallel  is  vested  in  England  and  that  part  which  lies 
south  of  that  parallel  in  America.  We  think,  therefore,  that 
that  parallel  ought  to  be  the  basis  of  the  boundary;  but, 
as  if  prolonged  indefinitely,  it  would  cut  off  the  southern  extrem- 
ity of  Vancouver  Island,  with  little  advantage  to  America,  and 
great  injury,  if  we  shall  ever  occupy  that  island,  to  England;  we 
think  that  it  should  cease  to  be  the  boundary  when  it  reaches  the 
coast,  and  that  from  thence  the  boundary  should  be  the  sea.  This 
would  give  to  us  the  whole  of  Vancouver's  Island,  which,  if  we  are 
absurd  enough  to  plant  a  colony  in  the  northern  Pacific,  is  the 
least  objectionable  seat. 

"It  possesses  excellent  ports,  a  tolerable  climate,  and  some  cul- 
tivatable  soil ;  an  ascertained  and  defensible  frontier,  and  the  com- 
mand of  the  important  straits,  by  which  to  the  east  and  to  the 
south,  it  is  separated  from  the  continent.  That  its  distance  from 
Europe  would  render  it  a  costly  and  unprofitable  incumbrance,  is 
true;  but  that  objection  applies  with  equal  force  to  every  part  of 
Oregon." 

Thus  these  two  articles — in  two  of  the  most  influential  periodi- 
cals in  Great  Britain  (both  written  by  the  famous  political  econo- 
mist and  philosophical  essayist,  Nassau  W.  Senior,  and  published 
fourteen  and  twelve  months  before  the  treaty  of  1846  was  made) 
— recommend  to  Great  Britain  to  yield  to  the  American  claims 
and  fix  the  boundary  precisely  as  it  was  fixed  by  that  treaty. 

A  favorite  contention  of  Barrows  and  Nixon  and  other  advo- 
cates of  the  Whitman  Legend  is  that  our  statesmen  and  people 
were  constantly  deceived  by  articles  published  in  the  interest  of 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  English  periodicals,  asserting  the  worth- 
lessness  of  Oregon,  so  that  we  might  be  induced  to  yield  it  up  to 
Great  Britain  as  not  worth  contending  for. 

Thus  (Nixon  "How  Marcus  Whitman  Saved  Oregon,"  p.  192) 
"In  the  mean  time  they"  (i.  e.,  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.)  "ran  a  lit- 
erary bureau  for  all  it  was  worth  in  the  disparagement  of  Oregon 


258  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

for  all  purposes  except  those  of  the  fur  trader.  The  English  press 
was  mainly  depended  upon  for  this  work,  but  the  best  means  in 
reach  were  used  that  all  these  statements  should  reach  the  ruling 
powers  and  the  reading  people  of  the  United  States. 

''The  effect  of  this  literary  bureau  upon  American  statesmen 
and  the  most  intelligent  class  of  readers  prior  to  the  spring  of 
1843  is  easily  seen  by  the  sentiments  quoted,  and  by  their  ])ub- 
lished  acts,  in  refusing  to  legislate  for  Oregon." 

This  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  '"literary  bureau"  is  one  of  the  mul- 
titudinous ''facts"  in  Dr.  Nixon's  book  for  which  "he  himself"  is 
"authority" — it  never  having  been  discovered  by  any  one  else  be- 
cause it  only  existed  in  his  imagination. 

Barrows'  "Oregon"  (pj).  191-2)  asserts  what  is  equally  ficti- 
tious, and  probably  the  germ  out  of  which  Dr.  Nixon's  fervid  fancy 
evolved  this  ''literary  bureau,"  as  follows: 

"At  the  time  of  the"  (alleged)  "interview  between  Whitman 
and  Webster,  the  most  of  the  information  received  in  the  States 
from  the  northwest  had  of  necessity,  therefore,  come  in  through 
English  channels,  and  was  moulded  to  Hudson  Bay  interests. 
While  that  country  lay  as  an  obscure  right  between  the  two  na- 
tions, and  the  Company  saw  an  advance  oj)ening  for  their  trade, 
it  was  quite  natural  that  they  should  diminish  temptations  to  visit 
it,  and  weave  obstacles  between  it  and  a  rival  on  the  border.  This 
they  did  to  a  successful  extent  up  to  the  time  when  Whitman  ar- 
rived on  the  Potomac.  They  had  made  it  quite  obvious  to  the  un- 
informed, says  Gray,  'that  the  whole  country  was  of  little  value 
to  any  one.  It  would  scarcely  support  the  few  Indians,  much  less 
a  large  population  of  settlers.'  English  volumes  of  travel  and 
scholarly  review  articles  were  teaching  the  same  delusion  abroad." 

True,  Barrows  explicitly  contradicts  this  only  29  pages  after 
(on  p.  220)  and  states — what  is  very  rare  in  his  "Oregon" — the 
exact  truth,  as  follows :  "It  is  not  necessary  to  itemize,  for  all 
histories,  sketches  and  travels  touching  primitive  times  and  the 
dawn  of  civilization  in  that  country,  came  in  the  line  of  its  dis- 
covery and  purchase  and  exploration  by  the  United  States."  But 
such  self-contradiction  is  by  no  means  uncommon  in  Barrows' 
"Oregon." 

Returning  now  to  p.  192,  Barrows  continues:  "So  the  Edin- 
burgh Rcvieiv  said:  (b)  'Only  a  small  proportion  of  the  land  is 
capable  of  cultivation.'  (a)  'West  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  the 
desert  extends  from  the  Mexican  ( Calif ornian)  border  to  the  Co- 
lumbia,' and  it  endeavored  to  show  that  the  country  east  of  the 
mountains  was  (a)  'incapable,  probably  forever,  of  fixed  settle- 
ments' where  now  are  Kansas,  Nebraska  and  Dakota. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  259 

"The  British  and  Foreign  Review  preached  to  the  same  appli- 
cation and  conclusion.  'Upon  the  whole,  therefore,  the  Oregon 
Territory  holds  out  no  great  promise  as  an  agricultural  field.'  The 
London  Examiner  was  quite  pronounced,  if  not  petulant,  that  the 
ignorant  Americans  did  not  give  up  a  country  equal  in  area  to 
England  eight  times :  The  whole  territory  in  dispute  is  not  worth 
twenty  thousand  pounds  to  either  power.'  " 

''(Note  Vol.  LXXXII.,  p.  240;  also  July,  1843,  p.  184,  British 
and  Foreign  Review;  January,  1844,  p.  21,  London  Examiner, 
quoted  in  Webster's  Works  in  Introd.  cxlix.)" 

The  putting  of  Vol.  LXXXII.  in  this  foot  note  was  deliberately 
dishonest,  as  he  well  knew  that  few  of  his  readers  would  ever  have 
a  chance  to  look  up  that  volume  and  find  that  it  was  for  July,  1845, 
and  because,  to  prevent  any  one  from  having  any  excuse  for  quot- 
ing its  articles  otherwise  than  by  date,  the  Edinburgh  Review  has 
always  printed  at  the  top  of  every  page  the  month  and  year  of  its 
publication. 

On  p.  194  Barrows  continues:  "The  same  article  from  which 
we  have  quoted  in  the  Edinburgh  Revieio  thinks  that  the  American 
colonists  in  Oregon  have  been  (b)  'misled  by  the  representations 
of  the  climate  and  soil  of  Oregon,  which  for  party  purposes  have 
been  spread  through  the  United  States.'  Then  the  Review  becomes 
prophetic:  (b)  'It  seems  probable  that,  in  a  few  years,  all  that 
formerly  gave  life  to  the  country,  both  the  hunter  and  his  prey, 
will  become  extinct,  and  that  their  place  will  be  supplied  by  a  thin 
white  and  half-breed  population,  scattered  along  the  few  fertile 
valleys,  supported  by  pasture  instead  of  the  chase,  and  gradually 
degenerating  into  barbarism,  far  more  offensive  than  the  back- 
woodsman.' This  defamation  of  Oregon  is  naturally  followed  by 
the  English  writer  with  the  declaration  that  (b)  'No  nation  now 
possesses  any  title,  perfect  or  imperfect,  by  discovery,  by  settle- 
ment, by  treaty,  or  by  prescription.'  " 

As  it  is  impossible  to  tell  from  anything  in  Barrows  what  he 
has  here  quoted  from  the  July,  1843,  and  what  from  the  .Tuly,  1845, 
Edinburgh  Review,  I  have  marked  the  quotations  from  the  July, 
1843,  issue  with  (a),  and  those  from  the  July,  1845,  issue  with 
(b),  and  I  have  quoted  every  word  he  has  quoted  from  the  July, 
1845,  number. 

Yet^  immediately  following  the  last  sentence  quoted  by  him, 
the  Review  goes  on  (as  we  have  already  seen)  to  declare  that  "An 
imperfect  title  by  contiguity  to  the  portion  which  lies  north  of  the 
49th  parallel  is  vested  in  England,  and  to  that  part  which  lies 
south  of  that  parallel  in  America,"  and  then  recommends  that  the 
boundary  should  be  run  on  the  49th  parallel  to  the  coast  and  the 
Straits  of  Fuca  to  the  ocean. 


2G0  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

Yet  this  article,  thus  avowedl}'  written  in  1845,  to  influence 
England  to  yield  to  the  American  claim,  and  surrender  Oregon  up 
to  4!)  degrees,  is  thus  garbled  and  antedated  by  Barrows  and  Nixon 
to  deceive  their  readers  into  believing  that  it  was  published  before 
Whitman's  ride  to  misrepresent  the  value  of  Oregon,  and  so  induce 
the  Americans  to  surrender  it  to  Great  Britain. 

As  English  reviews  and  quarterlies  exercised  ten  thousand  times 
as  much  influence  on  English  public  opinion  as  on  American,  and 
not  even  Barrows  and  Nixon  ])retend  that  they  issued  one  edition 
commending  Oregon  for  their  English  readers,  so  that  they  would 
insist  on  holding  it,  and  a  diflerent  one  condemning  it  to  deceive 
their  American  readers  into  surrendering  it,  it  would  appear  evi- 
dent to  ordinary  minds  that  even  if  their  articles  had  been  printed 
before  Whitman's  ride,  their  effect  would  have  been  to  cause  Eng- 
land to  be  willing  to  surrender  Oregon,  rather  than  go  to  war  for 
what  appeared  of  so  little  value. 

But  what  sort  of  a  historical  conscience  can  a  writer  have,  who, 
like  l>arrows,  not  only  advances  the  preposterous  theory  that  Amer- 
ican opinion  was  misled  about  the  value  of  Oregon  ''prior  to  Whit- 
man's arrival  on  the  l*otomac,"  by  articles  in  British  reviews  and 
quarterlies ;  but,  finding  absolutely  nothing  of  any  importance  about 
Oregon  in  any  such  i)ublications,  prior  to  1843,  nothing  which  even 
his  i)heuonienal  ability  in  misquoting  can  make  even  seem  to  fur- 
nish the  least  support  to  his  theory,  deliberately  uses  for  proof  that 
the  English  publications  had  deceived  our  Government  and  people 
''up  to  the  time  Whitman  arrived  on  the  Potomac"  (i.  e.,  late  in 
March,  or  more  likely  about  the  middle  of  April,  1843),  such 
garbled  extracts  as  these,  from  articles  published  three  months, 
nine  months,  two  years  and  three  months,  four  years  and  three 
months,  and  twenty-four  years  and  three  months  after  the  time  "up 
to  which"  they  had  so  succeeded  in  deceiving  our  people  and  states- 
men?— for  the  article  from  the  London  Examiner  (from  which  he 
quotes  only  fourteen  words,  with  no  intimation  of  its  date),  was 
not  published  till  July  24,  1847,  and  (on  p.  196)  he  quotes  thirty- 
two  words  from  a  long  article  in  the  Westminster  Review  (and  re- 
frains from  giving  any  information  as  to  its  date),  which  was  not 
published  till  July,  1867 — and  had  no  more  connection  with  the 
Oregon  Question  than  it  had  with  the  Schleswig-Holstein  Question, 
or  the  Afghanistan  Question,  or  the  Transvaal  Question,  or  the 
Soudan  Question. 

Dr.  Nixon,  seeing  the  absurdity  of  thus  asserting  that  articles 
published  in  English  reviews  and  magazines  influenced  public  opin- 
ion here  before  their  ])ublication,  coolly  changes  the  date  for  the 
London  and  Foreign  Review  article  from  its  true  date,  January, 
1844,  to  "as  late  as  1840,"  and  that  of  the  London  Examiner  article 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  261 

from  July  24,  1847,  to     .     .     .     ''in  1843."     (Cf.  his  ''How  Marcus 
Whitman  Saved  Oregon,"  p.  47.) 

As  we  have  seen,  he  set  out  to  write  that  book  with  the  idea 
that  "he  himself  was  authority"  for  its  facts  (Cf.  the  first  page  of 
its  Preface),  and  therefore  doubtless  he  deemed  it  entirely  proper 
that  when  any  real  facts  obstinately  persisted  in  being  irreconcilable 
with  his  theories,  he,  being  "himself  authority  for  his  facts,"  had 
the  right  to  change  dates — or  anything  else — so  as  to  make  the  kind 
of  "facts"  for  which  "he  himself"  was  willing  to  be  "authority." 

The  result  is  that  his  book  is  as  grotesquely  unhistorical  as  any- 
thing ever  printed,  and  to  one  who  knows  the  true  history  of  the 
acquisition  of  Oregon,  and  the  facts  about  the  character  and  unim- 
portance of  Marcus  Whitman's  life,  it  is  as  laughable  as  a  comic 
almanac. 

The  article  from  the  British  and  Foreign  Review  is  fair  from  the 
British  standpoint,  and  instead  of  being  designed  to  deceive  Ameri- 
cans about  Oregon  and  so  induce  them  to  surrender  it  to  Great 
Britain,  was  designed  to  secure  arbitration  of  the  boundary  dispute. 

The  London  Examiner  article  (from  which  both  Barrows  and 
Nixon  make  the  same  outrageous  misquotation  of  only  fourteen 
words)  I  will  notice  in  connection  with  the  origin  of  the  treaty 
of  1846. 

Returning  now  to  the  oflScial  record  of  the  negotiations  in  House 
6x.  Doc.  No.  2,  we  find  that  on  July  12,  1845,  Mr.  James  Buchanan, 
Secretary  of  State,  reopened  the  Oregon  negotiation  with  Mr.  Rich- 
ard Pakenham  in  a  long  statement  beginning:  "The  undersigned, 
Secretary  of  State  of  the  United  States,  now  proceeds  to  resume 
the  negotiation  on  the  Oregon  question,  at  the  point  where  it  was 
left  by  his  predecessor. 

"The  British  plenipotentiary,  in  his  note  to  Mr.  Calhoun  of  the 
12th  September  last,  'that  as  the  American  plenipotentiary  declines 
the  proposal  offered  on  the  part  of  Great  Britain,  he  will  have  the 
goodness  to  state  what  arrangements  he  is,  on  the  part  of  the 
United  States,  prepared  to  propose  for  an  equitable  adjustment  of 
the  question ;  and  more  especially  that  he  will  have  the  goodness  to 
define  the  nature  and  extent  of  the  claims  which  the  United  States 
may  have  to  other  portions  of  the  territory  to  which  allusion  is 
made  in  the  concluding  part  of  his  statement,  as  it  is  obvious  that 
no  arrangement  can  be  made  with  respect  to  a  part  of  the  territory 
in  dispute  while  a  claim  is  reserved  to  any  portion  of  the  remain- 
der.' "  This  sentence  is  conclusive  proof  that  Mr.  Calhoun  had 
never  offered  49  degrees  or  any  other  line  for  a  boundary. 

After  strong  argument  in  favor  of  the  validity  of  our  title  to  all 
of  Oregon  (containing,  however,  nothing  new),  (on  p.  169)  he  says 
that  "While  the  President  holds  these  ideas  as  to  the  validitv  of 


262  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

our  title  "  (i.  e.,  to  the  whole  of  Oregon),  ''he  finds  himself  em- 
barrassed by  the  fact  that  his  predecessors  in  office  have  not  in- 
sisted on  the  whole  of  Oregon,  but  have  "uniformly  proceeded  upon 
the  principle  of  compromise  in  all  their  negotiations.     .     .     . 

"In  view  of  these  facts,  the  President  has  determined  to  pursue 
the  ])resent  negotiation  to  its  conclusion  upon  the  principle  of  com- 
promise in  which  it  commenced,  and  to  make  one  more  effort  to 
adjust  this  long-pending  controversy.  In  this  determination  he 
trusts  that  the  British  Government  will  recognize  his  sincere  and 
anxious  desire  to  cultivate  the  most  friendly  relations  between  the 
two  countries,  and  to  manifest  to  the  world  that  he  is  actuated  by 
a  spirit  of  moderation.  He  has,  therefore,  instructed  the  under- 
signed again  to  propose  to  the  Government  of  Great  Britain  that 
the  Oregon  territory  shall  be  divided  between  the  two  countries  by 
the  49th  parallel  of  north  latitude  from  the  Rocky  Mountains  to 
the  I*acific  ocean,  offering  at  the  same  time  to  make  free  to  Great 
Britain  any  port  or  ports  on  Vancouver's  Island,  south  of  this  par- 
allel, which  the  British  Government  may  desire.'' 

To  this,  on  July  29,  1845,  Mr.  Pakenham  replied  with  a  long 
argument  as  to  the  claims  of  the  two  nations  to  the  Oregon  coun- 
try, and  then  without  referring  to  the  proposition  made  in  Mr. 
Buchanan's  letter  of  July  12,  to  his  Government  for  instructions 
(as  it  was  expected  by  both  Governments  that  he  would  do,  if  not 
willing  himself  to  accept  it),  he  peremptorily  rejected  it,  in  the 
following  language:  "After  this  exposition  of  the  view  entertained 
by  the  British  Government  respecting  the  relative  value  and  im- 
portance of  the  British  and  American  claims,  the  American  pleni- 
potentiary will  not  be  surprised  to  hear  that  the  undersigned  does 
not  feel  at  liberty  to  acce{)t  the  proposal  olfered  by  the  American 
plenipotentiary  for  the  settlement  of  the  question.  .  .  .  The 
undersigned,  therefore,  trusts  that  the  American  plenipotentiary 
will  bo  ])repared  to  offer  some  further  proi)Osal  for  the  settlement 
of  the  Oregon  (juestion  more  consistent  with  fairness  and  ecpiity, 
and  with  the  reasonable  expectations  of  the  British  Government,  as 
defined  in  the  statement  marked  D,  which  the  undersigned  had  the 
honour  to  present  to  the  American  plenipotentiary  at  the  early 
part  of  the  present  negotiation." 

To  this,  on  August  30,  1845,  Mr.  Buchanan  replied  with  a  long 
and  vigorous  letter,  contravening  Mr.  Pakenham's  arguments  as 
to  the  claims  of  the  British  Government  to  any  part  of  Oregon, 
and  stating  that  though  convinced  of  the  validity  of  our  title  to 
the  whole  territory,  the  President,  out  of  res])ect  for  the  actions  of 
his  predecessors  in  office,  and  from  "a  sincere  and  anxious  desire 
to  promote  peace  and  harmony  between  the  two  countries,"  had  so 
fnr  yielded   his  own  o})inion  as  to  again  offer  49  degrees  as  the 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  263 

boundary  line,  and  concluded  as  follows:  (p.  192)  "And  how  has 
this  proposition  been  received  by  the  British  plenipotentiary?  It 
has  been  rejected  without  even  a  reference  to  his  own  Government. 
Nay,  more;  the  British  plenipotentiary,  to  use  his  own  language, 
'trusts  that  the  American  plenipotentiary  will  be  prepared  to  offer 
some  further  proposal  for  the  settlement  of  the  Oregon  question 
more  consistent  with  fairness  and  equity,  and  with  the  reasonable 
expectations  of  the  British  Government.' 

"Under  such  circumstances,  the  undersigned  is  instructed  by  the 
President  to  say  that  he  owes  it  to  his  own  country,  and  a  just 
appreciation  of  her  title  to  the  Oregon  territory,  to  withdraw  the 
proposition  to  the  British  Government  which  had  been  made  under 
his  direction ;  and  it  is  hereby  accordingly  withdrawn. 

"In  taking  this  necessary  step,  the  President  still  cherishes  the 
hope  that  this  long-pending  controversy  may  yet  be  finally  adjusted 
in  such  a  manner  as  not  to  disturb  the  peace  or  interrupt  the  har- 
mony now  so  happily  subsisting  between  the  two  nations. 

"The  undersigned  avails  himself,  etc. 

"JAMES  BUCHANAN. 

"Right  Hon.  Richard  Pakenham,  etc.,  etc." 

This  proved  a  very  embarrassing  condition  of  affairs  for  the 
British  Foreign  OflQce,  which  had  expected  that  Mr.  Pakenham 
would  have  referred  to  it  for  instructions  any  proposition  he  might 
receive  for  a  boundary  to  Oregon ;  and  though  not  disposed  to  dis- 
grace Mr.  Pakenham  by  a  recall,  it  did  censure  him,  as  witness  the 
following : 

"Mr.  McLane  to  Mr.  Buchanan. 

"London,  Oct.  3,  1845. 

"I  received  on  the  29th  ult.  your  dispatch  No.  9,  dated  the  13th 
of  September,  transmitting  a  copy  of  your  last  note  ( 30th  of  August, 
1845)  to  Mr.  Pakenham,  relative  to  the  Oregon  question. 

"On  the  day  following  I  was  invited  by  Lord  Aberdeen  .  .  . 
to  an  interview  at  his  house  in  Argyll  street,  which  I  granted  ac- 
cordingly. The  object  of  the  interview,  as  I  had  anticipated,  re- 
lated exclusively  to  the  posture  in  which  the  negotiations  between 
the  two  Governments  had  been  placed  by  your  note  of  the  30th 
August  to  Mr.  Pakenham,  and  the  withdrawal  of  the  proposition 
which  the  President  had  previously  directed. 

"Lord  Aberdeen  not  only  lamented  but  censured  the  rejection  of 
our  proposition  by  Mr.  Pakenham,  without  referring  it  to  his  Gov- 
ernment. He  stated  that  if  Mr.  Pakenham  had  communicated  the 
American  proposition  to  the  Government  here,  as  he  was  expected 
to  have  done,  he,  Lord  Aberdeen,  would  have  taken  it  up  as  the 


204  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

basis  of  his  action,  and  entertained  little  doubt  that  he  would  have 
been  enabled  to  propose  modifications  which  might  ultimately  have 
resulted  in  an  adjustment  mutually  satisfactory  to  both  Govern- 
ments. 

"It  was  quite  obvious  to  me  that  Lord  Aberdeen  had  become 
convinced  in  his  own  mind,  though  in  what  way  I  do  not  pretend 
to  conjecture,  that  the  terms  which  it  was  his  intention  ultimately 
to  propose  or  assent  to  would  be  accepted  by  the  President,  and  that 
on  this  account  he  particularly  regretted  the  interruption  in  the 
negotiation  without  affording  an  opportunity  for  that  purpose. 

''Hon.  James  Buchanan,  "LOUIS  McLANE. 

"Secretary  of  State." 

On  page  34  of  Sen.  Ex.  Uoc.  489  (which  was  not  made  public 
till  after  the  ratification  of  the  treaty  of  1846;  when,  on  August  7, 
184G,  the  injunction  of  secrecy  was  removed  by  unanimous  vote  of 
the  Senate),  Mr.  Buchanan  wrote  to  Mr.  McLane,  on  November  5, 
1845,  concerning  the  withdrawal  of  the  offer  of  49  degrees  as  fol- 
lows : 

''The  President  thus  took  his  ground,  from  which  he  will  not 
depart.  If  the  British  Government  have  any  new  ])roposition  to 
submit  it  must  proceed  from  them  voluntarily,  and  without  any 
previous  invitation  or  assurance  on  our  part ;  and  then  such  a  propo- 
sition will  be  respectfully  considered  by  the  Government  of  the 
United  States. 

"This  is  the  posture  on  which  the  negotiation  now  stands;  and 
unless  in  the  meantime  it  should  be  changed  by  some  action  on  the 
part  of  the  British  Government,  the  President  intends  to  lay  the 
whole  subject  before  Congress  for  their  consideration." 

Accordingly  in  his  first  Annual  Message,  December  2,  1845,  the 
President  devoted  much  space  to  Oregon,  briefly  summarizing  the 
history  of  our  negotiations  with  Great  Britain  on  the  Oregon  bound- 
ary, and  transmitting  with  the  message  the  documents  relating  to 
the  negotiations  under  President  Tyler's  and  his  own  administra- 
tion, which  are  in  House  Ex.  Doc.  No.  2  and  Sen.  Ex,  Doc.  No.  1, 
29th  Cong.,  1st  Sess. 

Then  he  continued :  "All  attempts  at  compromise  having  failed, 
it  becomes  the  duty  of  Congress  to  consider  what  measures  it  may 
be  proper  to  adopt  for  the  security  and  protection  of  our  citizens 
now  inhabiting,  or  who  may  hereafter  inhabit,  Oregon,  and  for  the 
maintenance  of  our  just  title  to  that  territory.  In  adopting  meas- 
ures for  this  purpose,  care  should  be  taken  that  nothing  be  done 
to  violate  the  stipulations  of  the  convention  of  1827,  which  is  still 
in  force.  The  faith  of  treaties  in  their  letter  and  spirit  has  ever 
been,  and,  I  ti-ust,  will  ever  be,  scrupulously  observed  by  the  United 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  265 

States.  Under  that  convention  a  year's  notice  is  required  to  be 
given  by  either  party  to  the  other  before  the  joint  occupancy  shall 
terminate,  and  before  either  can  rightfully  assert  or  exercise  ex- 
clusive jurisdiction  over  any  portion  of  the  territory.  This  notice  it 
would,  in  my  judgment,  be  proper  to  give;  and  I  recommend  that 
provision  be  made  by  law  for  giving  it  accordingly,  and  terminating, 
in  this  manner,  the  convention  of  the  6th  of  August,  1827. 

"It  will  become  proper  for  Congress  to  determine  what  legisla- 
tion they  can,  in  the  meantime,  adopt,  without  violating  this  con- 
vention." 

He  then  recommends,  as  things  that  may  properly  be  done  with- 
out violating  the  convention : 

1st.  "The  extension  of  our  laws  over  American  citizens  in  Ore- 
gon, to  the  same  extent  as  the  Act  of  Parliament  of  July  2,  1821, 
had  extended  British  laws  over  British  subjects  in  Oregon. 

2nd.  "That  provision  be  made  for  establishing  an  Indian  agency 
and  such  sub-agencies  as  may  be  deemed  necessary  beyond  the  Rocky 
Mountains. 

3rd.  "That  a  suitable  number  of  stockades  and  block-house  forts 
be  erected  along  the  usual  route  between  our  frontier  settlements  on 
the  Missouri  and  the  Rocky  Mountains ;  and  that  an  adequate  force 
of  mounted  riflemen  be  raised  to  guard  and  protect  them  on  their 
journey. 

4th.  "That  a  monthly  mail  to  Oregon  be  established."  And  it 
continued  as  follows:  "It  is  submitted  to  the  wisdom  of  Congress 
to  determine  whether,  at  their  present  session,  and  until  after  the 
expiration  of  the  year's  notice,  any  other  measures  may  be  adopted, 
consistently  with  the  convention  of  1827,  for  the  security  of  our 
rights,  and  the  government  and  protection  of  our  citizens  in  Oregon. 
That  it  will  ultimately  be  wise  and  proper  to  make  liberal  grants 
of  land  to  the  patriotic  pioneers,  who,  amidst  privations  and  dangers, 
lead  the  way  through  savage  tribes  inhabiting  the  vast  wilderness 
intervening  between  our  frontier  settlements  and  Oregon,  and  who 
cultivate  and  are  ready  to  defend  the  soil,  I  am  fully  satisfied.  To 
doubt  whether  they  will  obtain  such  grants  as  soon  as  the  conven- 
tion between  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain  shall  have  ceased 
to  exist  would  be  to  doubt  the  justice  of  Congress ;  but  pending  the 
year's  notice  it  is  worthy  of  consideration  whether  a  stipulation  to 
this  effect  may  be  made  consistently  with  the  spirit  of  that  conven- 
tion. 

"The  recommendations  which  I  have  made  as  to  the  best  manner 
of  securing  our  rights  in  Oregon  are  submitted  to  Congress  with 
great  deference.  Should  they,  in  their  wisdom,  devise  any  other 
mode  better  calculated  to  accomplish  the  same  object,  it  shall  meet 
with  my  hearty  concurrence. 


206  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

"At  the  end  of  the  year's  notice,  should  Congress  think  it  proper 
to  make  provision  for  giving  that  notice,  we  shall  have  reached  a 
period  when  the  national  rights  in  Oregon  must  either  be  abandoned 
or  firmly  established.  That  they  can  not  be  abandoned  without  a 
sacrifice  of  both  national  honor  and  interest  is  too  clear  to  admit  of 
doubt." 

There  were  speedily  introduced  in  Congress  a  joint  resolution 
authorizing  tlie  President  to  give  the  twelve  months'  notice  requisite 
to  terminate  the  treaty  of  1827,  and  bills  "to  organize  and  arm  the 
militia  of  Oregon,"  "to  organize  a  territorial  government  for  Ore- 
gon," "to  establish  a  line  of  stockade  and  block-house  forts  on  the 
route  from  the  frontier  settlements  of  Missouri  to  the  territory  of 
Oregon,"  and  "to  protect  the  rights  of  American  citizens  in  the  terri- 
tory of  Oregon  until  the  termination  of  the  joint  occupancy  of  the 
same." 

On  these  various  measures  such  a  flood  of  oratory  was  let  loose 
as  rarely  has  been  heard  in  Congress,  no  less  than  98  Representatives 
and  34  Senators  speaking  on  them,  notwithstanding  all  the  excite- 
ment about  the  beginning  of  the  war  with  ^Mexico,  on  April 
24,  1846,  and  the  introduction  and  passage  of  the  measures  needful 
for  carrying  on  that  contest. 

In  all  the  scores  of  thousands  of  pages  of  official  reports  of  de- 
bates in  Congress  from  the  beginning  of  our  national  existence  to 
this  day,  there  is  little  matter  that  is  more  drearily  uninteresting 
than  the  six  or  seven  hundred  thousand  words  of  this  debate — 
threshing  over  as  it  does  only  the  same  old  straw  of  our  title  to 
Oregon,  and  the  records  of  bur  negotiations  with  Great  Britain  upon 
it,  and  of  our  duties  under  the  treaties  of  1818  and  1827,  from  which 
all  the  grain  had  been  threshed  years  before,  especially  in  the  great 
debates  of  1824-5,  1828-0,  1842-3,  and  in  the  numerous  reports  of  com- 
mittees to  the  House  and  Senate. 

None  of  the  bills  were  enacted  into  law,  but  the  joint  resolution 
for  the  abrogation  of  the  treaty  of  1827  passed  the  House  by  163  to 
54,  and,  after  long  debate  and  amendments  making  it  more  concilia- 
tory in  tone,  and  authorizing  the  President  to  give  the  notice  at  "his 
discretion,"  it  ])assed  the  Senate  by  42  to  10,  and  was  approved  by 
President  Polk,  April  27,  1846.  The  notice  was  given  on  April  28, 
1846,  and  inclosed  in  a  dispatch  of  same  date  from  Mr.  Buchanan 
to  Mr.  McLane,  by  whom  it  was  delivered  to  Lord  Aberdeen  on  May 
21,  1846,  and  by  him  acknowledged  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  McLane,  dated 
May  22,  1846,  announcing  that  "In  conformity  with  its  tenor.  Her 
Majesty's  Government  will  consider  the  convention  of  the  6th  of 
August,  1827,  abrogated  accordingly  from  the  21st  of  May,  1847." 
(Cf.  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  No.  489,  pp.  46-8  and  50.) 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  267 

But,  already,  on  May  18,  1846,  Lord  Aberdeen  had  instructed  Mr. 
Pakenham  to  reopen  negotiations  at  Washington  and  offer  us  the 
line  suggested  first  by  Mr.  Huskisson,  the  British  plenipotentiary,  in 
1826;  and  repeatedly  suggested  by  Edward  Everett,  in  November 
and  December,  1843 ;  April,  1844 ;  and  February,  1845 ;  and  proposed 
in  the  London  Examiner^  April  25,  1845 ;  and  the  Edinburgh  Review 
of  July,  1845;  as  follows:  ''You  will  accordingly  propose  to  the 
American  Secretary  of  State  that  the  line  of  demarcation  should  be 
continued  along  the  49th  parallel,  from  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the 
sea  coast,  and  from  thence,  in  a  southerly  direction,  through  the 
center  of  King  George's  Sound  and  the  Straits  of  Juan  de  Fuca,  to 
the  Pacific  Ocean,  leaving  the  whole  of  Vancouver's  Island,  with  its 
ports  and  harbors,  in  the  possession  of  Great  Britain."  (Cf,  Berlin 
Arbitration,  p.  52.) 

Our  Government  had  been  informed  by  the  dispatch  of  Mr.  Mc- 
Lane  to  Mr.  Buchanan,  dated  London,  April  17,  1846,  that  the  British 
Government  "Would  take  no  further  step  towards  renewing  the  ne- 
gotiation until  after  Congress  had  finally  acted  upon  the  question 
of  notice."     (Cf.  Berlin  Arbitration,  p.  49.) 

How  speedily  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen  directed  this  resumption  of 
negotiations  only  two  days  after  being  informally  notified  of  the 
action  of  Congress  on  the  question  of  notice,  and  without  waiting 
for  the  formal  oflScial  notification  of  that  action,  appears  from 
the  following  extract  from  a  long  dispatch  of  Mr.  McLane  to  Mr. 
Buchanan,  dated  London,  May  18,  1846: 

"I  received  late  in  the  day,  on  the  15th  inst.  (Friday),  your  des- 
patch number  twenty-seven,  dated  the  2Sth  of  April,  1846 ;  transmit- 
ting a  notice  for  the  abrogation  of  the  convention  of  the  6th  of  Au- 
gust, 1827.  ...  I  have  now  to  acquaint  you  that,  after  the  re- 
ceipt of  your  despatches  on  the  15th  inst.  by  the  'Caledonia,'  I  had 
a  lengthened  conference  with  Lord  Aberdeen ;  on  which  occasion 
the  resumption  of  the  negotiation  for  an  amicable  settlement  of 
the  Oregon  question,  and  the  nature  of  the  proposition  he  contem- 
plated submitting  for  that  purpose,  formed  the  subject  of  a  full 
and  free  conversation.  I  have  now  to  state  that  instructions  will 
be  transmitted  to  Mr.  Pakenham  by  the  steamer  of  tomorrow,  to 
submit  a  new  and  further  proposition  on  the  part  of  this  Gov- 
ernment for  a  partition  of  the  territory  in  dispute.  ...  'It 
must  not  escape  observation,  that  during  the  preceding  admin- 
istration of  our  Government  the  extension  of  the  line  on  the  49th 
parallel  to  the  Strait  of  Fuca,  as  now  proposed  by  Lord  Aberdeen, 
was  actually  suggested  by  my  immediate  predecessor'  (Edw.  Ever- 
ett), as  one  he  thought  his  Government  might  accept."  (Cf.  Sen. 
Ex.  Doc.  489,  29th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  pp.  17-19.) 

(For  Everett's  repeated  suggestions  of  the  line  via  Straits  of 


268  ACQUISITIOX    OF    OREGON 

Fiica  Cf.  Everett  to  Upshur,  Nov.  14,  1843,  Berlin  Arbitration,  p. 
30 ;  Everett  to  Upshur,  Dec.  2,  1843,  Id.  p.  31 ;  Everett  to  Aberdeen, 
Nov.  30,  1843,  Id.  p.  32 ;  Everett  to  Nelson,  April  1,  1844,  Id.  p.  33 ; 
Everett  to  Calhoun,  Feb.  28,  1845,  Id.  p.  35.) 

President  Polk,  desiring  to  shift  the  responsibility  for  aban- 
doning 54  deg.  40  min.  from  his  own  shoulders  to  the  Senate,  on 
June  10,  1846,  sent  a  message  to  the  Senate  beginning  as  follows: 
''To  the  Senate  of  the  Ignited  States. 

''I  lay  before  the  Senate  a  proposal,  in  the  form  of  a  conven- 
tion, presented  to  the  Secretary  of  State  on  the  6th  inst.  by  the 
Envoy  Extraordinary  and  Minister  Plenipotentiary  of  Her  Bri- 
tannic Majesty,  for  the  adjustment  of  the  Oregon  question,  to- 
gether with  a  protocol  of  this  proceeding.  I  submit  this  proposal 
to  the  consideration  of  the  Senate,  and  request  their  advice  as  to 
the  action  which,  in  their  judgment,  it  may  be  proper  to  take  in 
reference  to  it." 

Then,  after  setting  forth  such  reasons  as  he  was  willing  to 
avow  for  taking  this  course,  instead  of  the  usual  one  of  signing 
a  treaty  and  sending  it  to  the  Senate  for  its  ratification  (with  or 
without  amendment),  or  its  rejection,  he  continues: 

"My  opinions  and  my  action  on  the  Oregon  question  were  fully 
nuide  known  to  Congress  in  my  annual  message  of  the  2d  of  De- 
cember last;  and  the  opinions  therein  expressed  remain  unchanged. 

"Should  the  Senate,  by  the  constitutional  majority  required 
for  the  ratification  of  treaties,  advise  the  acceptance  of  this  propo- 
sition, or  advise  it  with  such  modifications  as  they  may,  upon  full 
deliberation,  deem  proper,  I  shall  conform  my  action  to  their  ad- 
vice. Should  the  Senate,  however,  decline  by  such  constitutional 
majority  to  give  such  advice,  or  to  ex])ress  an  opinion  on  the  sub- 
ject, I  shall  consider  it  my  duty  to  reject  the  offer." 

After  three  days'  debate,  and  the  rejection  of  an  amendment 
limiting  the  right  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  navigate  the  Co- 
lumbia to  the  year  1863,  on  June  12,  1846,  by  a  vote  of  38  to  12, 
the  Senate  advised  the  President  to  accept  the  proposal  of  the 
British  Government,  and,  accordingly,  on  June  15,  1846,  Mr. 
Buchanan  and  ilr.  Pakenham  signed  the  treaty,  and  on  June  16, 
1846,  the  President  sent  it  to  the  Senate  with  a  brief  message,  and 
after  another  three  days'  debate,  and  the  rejection  by  a  vote  of 
5  yeas  to  42  nays  of  a  substitute  which  Senator  E.  Hannegan  of 
Indiana  offered  insisting  on  our  right  to  the  territory  to  54  degrees 
and  40  minutes,  on  June  18,  1846,  by  a  vote  of  42  yeas  to  14  nays 
the  Senate  ratified  the  treaty,  exactly  as  it  was  written  in  Eng- 
land.    (Cf.  Doc.  489,  pp.  1-9^) 

The  first  article  of  the  treaty  fixed  the  northern  boundary  of 
the  Oregon   territory  at  49  degrees  north  latitude  to  the  middle 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  269 

of  the  channel  which  separates  the  continent  from  Vancouver's 
Island,  and  thence  southerly  through  the  middle  of  said  channel 
and  of  Fuca's  Strait  to  the  Pacific. 

The  second  article  grants  free  navigation  of  the  Columbia  to 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  to  British  subjects  trading  with  it.  This 
right  the  introduction  of  steamboat  lines  and  the  building  of  rail- 
roads long  since  made  worthless. 

The  third  and  fourth  articles  are  as  follows: 

"Art.  3.  In  the  future  appropriation  of  the  territory  south  of 
the  49th  parallel  of  north  latitude,  as  provided  in  the  first  article 
of  this  treaty,  the  possessory  rights  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and 
of  all  British  subjects  who  may  be  already  in  the  occupation  of 
land  or  other  property  lawfully  acquired  within  the  said  territory, 
shall  be  respected. 

''Art.  4.  The  farms,  lands  and  other  property  of  every  descrip- 
tion belonging  to  the  Puget's  Sound  Agricultural  Company,  on  the 
north  side  of  the  Columbia  River,  shall  be  confirmed  to  the  said 
company.  In  case,  however,  the  situation  of  those  farms  and  lands 
should  be  considered  by  the  United  States  to  be  of  public  and 
political  importance,  and  the  United  States  Government  should 
signify  a  desire  to  obtain  possession  of  the  whole  or  of  any  part 
thereof,  the  property  so  required  shall  be  transferred  to  the  said 
Government,  at  a  proper  valuation  to  be  agreed  upon  between  the 
parties." 

Although  of  the  55  Senators  voting  on  the  ratification  of  this 
treaty  32  were  Democrats  and  23  Whigs,  it  was  saved  from  defeat 
only  by  the  Whig  vote,  for  the  yeas  included  23  Whigs  and  only 
18  Democrats,  and  all  the  14  nays  were  Democrats,  being  the  irre- 
concilable "fifty-four  forty  or  fight"  ones. 

Benton,  who  had  so  long  led  the  "Oregon  Jingo"  band,  seems 
never  to  have  been  carried  away  by  the  "fifty-four  forty  or  fight" 
craze,  "He  was  one  of  the  very  few  leading  Demorcats  who,  through- 
out the  Presidential  campaign,  and  at  all  times,  was  not  only  satis- 
fied with  49  degrees,  but  also  contended  that  the  American  claim 
to  54  degrees  and  40  minutes  was  wholly  unfounded,  and  the  merest 
pretense."  (Cf.  "Life  and  Times  of  James  K.  Polk,"  by  John  Robert 
Irelan,  M.  D.,  p.  214.) 

Benton  himself  (in  "Thirty  Years'  View,"  Vol.  II.,  p.  661)  says 
"Mr.  Calhoun  showed  a  manly  spirit  in  proposing  the  line  of  49, 
as  the  dominant  party  in  the  United  States,  and  the  one  to  which 
he  belonged,  were  then  in  a  high  state  of  exultation  for  the  bound- 
ary of  54  deg.  40  min.,  and  the  Presidential  canvass,  on  the  Demo- 
cratic side,  was  raging  upon  that  cry.  The  Baltimore  Presiden- 
tial convention  had  followed  a  pernicious  practice,  of  recent  inven- 
tion, in  laying  down  a  platform  of  principles  on  which  the  can- 


270  ACQUI8ITI0X    OF    OREGON 

vass  was  to  be  conducted,  and  54  deg.  40  min.  for  the  northern 
boundary  of  Oregon  had  been  made  a  canon  of  political  faith,  from 
which  there  was  to  be  no  dei)arture  except  upon  the  penalty  of 
political  damnation.  Mr.  Calhoun  had  braved  this  penalty,  and 
in  doing  so  had  acted  up  to  his  public  and  responsible  duty.  .  . 
Mr.  Buchanan,  the  new  Secretary  of  State,  did  me  the  honor  to 
consult  me.  I  answered  him  promptly  and  frankly  that  I  held 
49  deg.  to  be  the  right  line;  and  that,  if  the  administration  made 
a  treaty  upon  that  line,  I  should  support  it.  This  was  early  in 
April.     ..." 

(Id.  p.  (577)  "The  issue  was  an  instructive  commentary  upon 
the  improvidence  of  these  party  platforms,  adopted  for  an  election- 
eering campaign,  made  into  a  party  watch-word,  often  fraught  with 
great  mischief  to  the  country,  and  often  founded  in  ignorance  or 
disregard  of  the  public  welfare.  This  Oregon  platform  was  emi- 
nently of  that  character.  It  was  a  party  platform  for  the  cam- 
paign ;  its  architects  knew  but  little  of  the  geography  of  the  north- 
west coast,  or  of  its  diplomatic  history.  They  had  never  heard  of 
the  line  of  the  Treaty  of  Utrecht,  and  denied  its  existence;  they 
had  never  heard  of  the  multiplied  offers  of  our  Government  to 
settle  upon  that  line,  and  treated  the  offer  now  as  a  novelty  and 
an  abandonment  of  our  rights;  they  had  never  heard  that  their 
54  deg.  40  min.  was  no  line  on  the  continent,  but  only  a  point  on 
an  island  on  the  coast,  fixed  by  the  Emperor  Paul  as  the  southern 
limit  of  the  charter  granted  by  him  to  the  Russian  Fur  Company; 
had  never  heard  of  Frazer's  River  and  New  Caledonia,  which  lay 
between  Oregon  and  their  indisputable  line,  and  ignored  the  ex- 
istence of  that  river  and  province.  The  pride  of  consistency  made 
them  adhere  to  these  errors ;  and  a  dCvSire  to  destroy  Mr.  Benton 
for  not  joining  in  the  hurrahs  for  the  "whole  of  Oregon,  or  none," 
and  for  the  "immediate  annexation  of  Texas  without  regard  to 
consequences,"  lent  additional  force  to  the  attacks  upon  him.  The 
conduct  of  the  Whigs  was  patriotic  in  preferring  their  country  to 
their  party — in  preventing  a  war  with  Great  Britain — and  in  sav- 
ing the  administration  from  itself  and  its  friends." 

Not  only  did  the  Whigs  in  the  Senate  save  the  treaty  from 
defeat,  but  the  course  of  the  Whig  papers  in  allaying  the  war 
spirit,  and  of  the  Whig  leaders,  and  especially  their  greatest  leader, 
Daniel  Webster,  in  working  constantly  for  peace  during  the  stormy 
101/2  months  between  Pakenham's  brusque  rejection  on  July  29, 
1845,  of  Polk's  offer  through  Secretary  of  State  Buchanan  of  the 
line  of  49  degrees,  and  the  tender  by  Lord  Aberdeen,  on  June  10, 
184G,  of  the  treaty  which  was  ratified,  was  eminently  sane  and  truly 
patriotic. 

George  T.  Curtis,  in  his  "Life  of  Webster,"  after  speaking  of 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  271 

the  clamor  for  war  on  the  Oregon  question  by  extremists  of  both 
countries,  says  (p.  257):  "On  the  7th  of  November,"  (1845) 
"therefore  he  went  into  Fanueil  Hall"  (Boston)  "and  spoke  on  the 
subject  of  Oregon.  .  .  After  expressing  the  opinion  that  it  was 
a  fit  subject  for  compromise  and  amicable  adjustment,  and  that 
such  an  adjustment  could  be  made  in  a  manner  perfectly  consistent 
with  the  honor  and  the  rights  of  all  parties,  he  indicated  the  49th 
parallel  as  a  natural  arrangement,  the  two  countries  keeping 
abreast  on  that  line  to  the  Pacific  Ocean." 

(P.  258)  After  giving  some  extracts  from  the  speech  Mr.  Cur- 
tis goes  on :  "A  letter  which  now  lies  before  me,  written  from 
Copenhagen  on  the  24th  of  December,  1845,  informed  Mr.  Webster 
that  his  speech  had  been  translated  and  published  in  full,  not  only 
in  Denmark  and  in  Sweden,  but  in  nearly  every  language  on  the 
Continent.  It  was  considered,  out  of  England,  as  having  settled 
the  question  of  peace  or  war. 

"But  the  diplomatic  crisis  was  not  passed  until  some  time 
afterward.  On  the  assembling  of  Congress  in  December  (1845), 
President  Polk,  in  his  annual  message,  after  having  recited  the 
history  of  the  negotiations,  and  submitting  the  correspondence, 
recommended  that  notice  be  given  for  terminating  the  joint  occu- 
pation of  the  territory  under  the  convention  of  1827,  and  that  the 
laws  of  the  United  States  be  extended  over  our  citizens  in  that 
country. 

"From  this  point  Mr.  Webster's  influence  in  the  settlement  of 
this  controversy  involves  a  public  and  a  private  history  which 
must  be  taken  together. 

"At  about  the  middle  of  December  he  received  a  private  letter 
from  James  McGregor,  Esq.,  of  Glasgow,  a  distinguished  member 
of  Parliament.  In  his  answer  to  this  letter  Mr.  Webster  suggested 
the  offer  by  the  British  Government  of  the  49th  parallel  as  the 
boundary.  His  letter  was  shown  to  Lord  Aberdeen  and  the  sug- 
gestion was  acted  upon.     .     ." 

The  story  of  this  letter  to  Mr.  McGregor  and  its  results  is  told 
in  some  detail  in  an  article  in  the  London  Examiner  for  July  24, 
1847 ;  and  with  that  and  a  brief  comment  on  the  atrocious  way  that 
Rev.  William  Barrows  in  his  "Oregon,"  and  Dr.  O.  W.  Nixon  in 
his  "How  Marcus  Whitman  Saved  Oregon,"  have  used  fourteen 
words  from  it  to  convey  to  their  readers  an  idea  totally  opposed 
to  the  purpose  of  the  writer  of  the  article,  we  will  conclude  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  adoption  of  the  Treaty  of  1846. 

On  p.  192  of  his  "Oregon,"  Barrows  (without  giving  the  date  of 
the  article — but  printing  it  in  such  connection  that  all  his  readers 
would  suppose  it  was  published  before  Whitman's  ride),  says: 
"The  London  Examiner  was  quite  pronounced,  if  not  petulant,  that 


272  ACQUISITIOX    OF    OREGON 

the  ignorant  Americans  did  not  give  iij)  a  country  equal  in  area  to 
England  eight  times.  'The  whole  territory  in  dispute  is  not  worth 
twenty  thousand  pounds  to  either  power.' "  As  usual  Barrows 
blunders  on  the  amount  of  "territory  in  dispute,"  which  was  not 
all  of  the  Oregon  territory,  but  only  that  i)art  north  and  west  of 
the  Columbia,  which  was  about  equal  in  area  to  England  one  in- 
stead of  eight  times — Great  Britain  having  offered  in  1824  and 
again  in  1827,  to  make  that  the  line  which  Barrows  himself  knows 
and  states  on  pp.  7.'^  and  75,  and  again  on  p.  285. 

This,  however,  is  a  trivial  matter  compared  with  (1)  his  attempt 
to  create  the  impression  that  it  was  printed  prior  to  Whitman's 
ride,  and  (2)  his  deliberate  and  most  shameless  perversion  of  the 
article  which  he  ])retends  to  quote.  It  is  quoted  verbatim  (omit- 
ting its  title)  in  the  "Works  of  Daniel  Webster,"  Vol.  I.,  Introduc- 
tion, p.  140. 

From  the  first  paragraph  of  the  article  itself  it  is  plainly  ap- 
parent that  it  was  published,  not  before  Whitman's  ride,  but  after 
the  treaty  of  1840  had  settled  the  title  to  Oregon,  and  the  whole 
article  shows  that  it  was  written  not  to  depreciate  Oregon,  nor  to 
find  fault  with  "ignorant  Americans,"  but  to  do  honor  to  Mr.  Mc- 
Gregor for  having  helped  to  cause  England  to  yield  to  our  claim 
of  49  degrees,  and  is  copied  by  the  editor  of  Webster's  works  (who 
was  his  life-long  friend,  Edward  Everett),  to  do  honor  to  Webster, 
and  there  is  nothing  in  it  which  even  suggests  petulance,  and  not 
a  word  about  "ignorant  Americans,"  nor  even  the  least  intimation 
that  the  Americans  ought  to  have  yielded  up  any  part  of  Oregon 
south  of  49  degrees.  Its  date,  I  found  after  ten  years'  search,  was 
July  24,  1847. 

That  the  reader  may  see  how  shamelessly  the  reverend  histor- 
ian perverts  its  meaning,  I  will  copy  it  in  full: 

"THE  OREGON  TERRITORY." 

"In  reply  to  the  question  put  to  him  in  reference  to  the  present 
war  establishments  of  this  country  and  the  propriety  of  applying 
the  princii)]e  of  arbitration  in  the  settlement  of  disputes  arising 
among  nations,  Mr.  McGregor,  one  of  the  candidates  for  the  repre- 
sentation of  Glasgow,  took  occasion  to  narrate  the  following  very 
important  and  remarkable  anecdote  in  connection  with  our  recent, 
but  now  happily  terminated  differences  with  the  United  States  on 
the  Oregon  question.  At  the  time  our  ambassador  at  Washington, 
the  Hon.  Mr.  Takenham,  refused  to  negotiate  on  the  49th  parallel 
of  north  latitude  as  the  basis  of  a  treaty"  (this  was  July  29th, 
1845),  "and  when  by  that  refusal  the  danger  of  a  rupture  between 
Great  Britain  and  America  became  really  imminent,  Mr,  Daniel 
Webster,  formerly  Secretary  of  State  to  the  American  Government, 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  273 

wrote  a  letter  to  Mr.  McGregor,  in  which  he  strongly  deprecated 
Mr.  Pakenham's  conduct,  which,  if  persisted  in  and  adopted  at 
home,  would  to  a  certainty  embroil  the  two  countries,  and  suggested 
an  equitable  compromise,  taking  the  49th  parallel  as  the  basis  of 
an  adjustment.  Mr.  McGregor  agreeing  entirely  with  Mr.  Webster 
in  the  propriety  of  a  mutual  giving  and  taking  to  avoid  a  rupture, 
and  the  more  especially  as  the  whole  territory  in  dispute  was  not 
worth  £20,000  (pounds)  to  either  power,  while  the  preparations 
alone  for  a  war  would  cost  a  great  deal  more  before  the  parties 
could  come  into  actual  conflict,  communicated  the  contents  of  Mr. 
Webster's  letter  to  Lord  John  Russell,  who  at  the  time  was  living 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Edinburgh,  and  in  reply  received  a  letter 
from  Lord  John,  in  which  he  stated  his  entire  accordance  with  the 
proposal  recommended  by  Mr.  Webster  and  approved  by  Mr.  Mc- 
Gregor, and  requested  the  latter,  as  he  (Lord  John)  was  not  in  a 
position  to  do  it  himself,  to  intimate  his  opinion  to  Lord  Aberdeen. 
Mr.  McGregor,  through  Lord  Canning,  Under  Secretary  of  the  For- 
eign Department,  did  so,  and  the  result  was  that  the  first  packet 
that  left  England  carried  out  to  America  the  proposition  in  accord- 
ance with  the  communication  already  referred  to  on  which  the 
treaty  of  Oregon  was  happily  concluded.  Mr.  McGregor  may  there- 
fore be  very  justly  said  to  have  been  the  instrument  of  preserving 
the  peace  of  the  world,  and  for  that  alone,  if  he  had  no  other  service 
to  appeal  to,  he  has  justly  earned  the  applause  and  admiration  not 
of  his  own  countrymen  only,  but  of  all  men  who  desire  to  promote 
the  best  interests  of  the  human  race."  To  this  the  editor  of 
"Webster's  Works"  adds:  "Without  wishing  to  detract  in  any 
degree  from  the  praise  due  to  Mr.  McGregor  for  his  judicious  and 
liberal  conduct  on  this  occasion,  the  main  result  is  exclusively  due 
to  his  American  correspondent." 

And  from  this  article,  congratulating  England  for  having 
yielded  to  the  American  claim  of  49  degrees,  Barrows  has  the 
face  to  extract  the  single  sentence,  "The  whole  territory  in  dis- 
pute is  not  worth  20,000  pounds  to  either  power,"  and  preface  it 
with  the  barefaced  falsehood  "The  London  Examiner  was  quite 
pronounced,  if  not  petulant,  that  the  ignorant  Americans  did 
not  give  up  a  country  equal  in  area  to  England  eight  times,"  and 
to  print  it  in  such  a  connection  as  would  lead  every  reader  to 
believe  that  it  was  printed  prior  to  March,  1843. 

Could  there  be  any  lower  depth  of  infamy  in  misquotation 
than  this? 

Dr.  O.  W.  Nixon,  on  p.  47  of  his  "How  Marcus  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon,"  among  the  misquotations  which  he  prints  as  samples  of 
the  deceptive  work  of  his  (imaginary)  "literary  bureau"  prints 
this  outrageous  misquotation  as  follows: 


274  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

"The  London  Examiner  in  18-i.S  wonders  that  'Ignorant  Amer- 
icans' were  'disjjosed  to  (luarrel  over  a  country,  the  whole  in  dis- 
pute not  being  worth  to  either  party  twenty  thousand  pounds.' " 

Of  course,  to  one  who  assures  his  readers,  as  Dr.  Nixon  does, 
that  he  himseir  "Is  authority  lor  the  facts  in  this  book,"  it  seems 
entirely  proper  not  only  to  antedate  this  article  four  years,  but 
to  insert  expressions  in  it  directly  contradictory  to  the  whole 
tenor  of  the  article,  so  that,  as  he  quotes  it,  it  may  support  his 
ridiculous  theory  of  a  "literary  bureau"  to  deceive  Americans 
about  the  value  of  Oregon,  instead  of  demolishing  that  theory,  as 
it  would  do  if  properly  dated  and  quoted  as  written. 

There  were  two  ambiguities  in  the  Treaty  of  1840. 

First.  There  was  no  definition  of  the  extent  of  the  "possessory 
rights"  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  or  of  the  ''farms,  lands  and  other 
property"  belonging  to  the  Puget's  Sound  Agricultural  Co. 

This  resulted  in  a  long  contention  as  to  their  value,  after  the 
United  States  appropriated  these  possessions. 

Various  propositions  were  made  for  the  payment  to  the  two 
companies  of  the  value  of  their  claims,  and  after  the  subject  had 
been  a  source  of  irritation  between  the  two  Governments  for  many 
3'ears,  on  July  1.  18<>3,  a  treaty  was  made  between  Great  Britain 
and  the  United  States  providing  for  the  submission  of  the  ques- 
tion to  trial  before  two  commissioners,  one  from  each  nation,  with 
power  to  choose  an  umpire,  if  needful,  their  decision  to  be  final 
and  binding. 

The  taking  of  evidence  began  at  Victoria,  Vancouver  Island, 
August  5,  1865,  and  ended  August  24,  1SG7.  Witnesses  were  ex- 
amined in  British  Columbia,  at  several  places  in  Oregon,  and  also 
in  Washington  Territory,  in  Montreal,  New  York  City,  Detroit, 
Mich.,  Washington,  D.  C,  Ciiicinnati,  O.,  New  Orleans,  La.,  Golds- 
boro,  N.  C,  the  Tortugas,  and  London,  England.  The  United 
States  called  more  than  100  witnesses,  including  almost  every 
prominent  army  officer  that  had  ever  been  stationed  in  Oregon, 
among  them  Generals  U.  S.  Grant,  Phil  Sheridan,  (Jordon  Gran- 
ger, Alfred  Pleasanton,  Rufus  Ingalls,  James  A.  Ilardie,  C.  C. 
Augur,  David  11.  Vinton,  and  Benjamin  Alvord,  also  Admiral 
Charles  Wilkes  and  Commander  Gibson  of  the  T'nited  States 
Navy. 

Finally  the  Commissioners,  on  September  10,  1809,  awarded 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  .1450,000,  and  the  Puget  Sound  Agricultural 
Company  |!200,()00,  which  was  promptly  paid  by  our  Government. 

Second.  There  was  no  name  given  (as  there  should  have  been) 
to  the  ''channel  which  separates  Vancouver's  Island  from  the  con- 
tinent," and  a  few  years  later,  when  the  Oregon  territory  had  be- 
come considerably  settled,  and  the  gold  discoveries  of  the  Frazer's 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  275 

River  country  and  the  Kootenay  region  had  drawn  many  settlers 
to  British  Columbia,  the  British  cast  covetous  eyes  on  the  Island 
of  San  Juan,  and  sought  to  make  it  appear  that  the  ''channel" 
meant  in  the  treaty  was  the  Rosario  Strait,  south  and  east  of  San 
Juan  Island,  and  not  w^hat  was  plainly  meant  in  the  Treaty,  the 
Canal  de  Haro,  north  and  west  of  San  Juan  Island. 

After  long  contention  about  this  matter — in  1859  serious 
enough  to  somewhat  endanger  the  peaceful  relations  between  the 
two  nations — on  May  8,  1871,  by  Article  34  of  the  Treaty  of 
Washington,  it  was  agreed  by  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States  to  submit  the  question  to  the  arbitration  of  the  Emperor 
William  of  Germany,  his  decision  to  be  final  and  without  appeal. 

The  famous  historian,  George  Bancroft,  then  past  70  years  of 
age,  and  a  life-long  Democrat,  was  at  once  nominated  by  the  Re- 
publican President,  Grant,  and  unanimously  confirmed  by  an 
overwhelmingly  Republican  Senate,  as  our  Envoy  Extraordinary 
and  Minister  Plenipotentiary  to  Berlin,  distinctly  on  the  ground 
that  he  was  the  one  man  best  qualified,  from  his  full  knowledge  of 
every  phase  of  the  question,  to  present  our  case  successfully,  as 
he  did.  His  "Memorial"  begins  as  follows:  "The  treaty  of  which 
the  interpretation  is  referred  to  Your  Majesty's  arbitrament  was 
ratified  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago.  Of  the  sixteen 
members  of  the  British  Cabinet  which  framed  and  presented  it 
for  the  acceptance  of  the  United  States,  Sir  Robert  Peel,  Lord 
Aberdeen  and  all  the  rest  but  one  are  no  more.  The  British  Min- 
ister at  Washington  who  signed  it  is  dead.  Of  American  states- 
men concerned  in  it,  the  Minister  at  London,  the  President  and 
Vice-President,  the  Secretary  of  State,  and  every  one  of  the  Presi- 
dent's constitutional  advisers,  except  one,  have  passed  away.  I 
alone  remain,  and  after  finishing  the  three-score  years  and  ten  that 
are  the  days  of  our  years,  am  selected  by  my  country  to  uphold  its 
rights. 

"Six  times  the  I'nited  States  had  received  the  offer  of  arbi- 
tration on  their  northwestern  boundary,  and  six  times  had  re- 
fused to  refer  a  point  where  the  importance  was  so  great  and  the 
right  so  clear.  But  when  consent  was  obtained  to  bring  the  ques- 
tion before  Your  Majesty,  my  country  resolved  to  change  its  policy, 
and  in  the  heart  of  Europe,  before  a  tribunal  from  which  no  judg- 
ment but  a  just  one  can  emanate,  to  explain  the  solid  foundation 
of  our  demand,  and  the  principles  of  moderation  and  justice  by 
which  we  have  been  governed. 

"The  case  involves  questions  of  geography,  of  history,  and  of 
international  law;  and  we  are  glad  that  the  discussion  should  be 
held  in  the  midst  of  a  nation  whose  sons  have  been  trained  in 
those  sciences  by  a  Carl  Ritter,  a  Ranke,  and  a  Heffter. 


27G  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

"The  long-continued  controversy  has  tended  to  estrange  from 
each  other  two  of  the  greatest  powers  in  the  world,  and  even 
menaced,  though  remotely,  a  conflict  in  arms.  A  want  of  confi- 
dence in  the  disposition  of  the  British  Government  has  been  sink- 
ing into  the  mind  of  the  States  of  the  Union  now  rising  on  the 
Pacific,  and  might  grow  into  a  popular  conviction,  not  easy  to  be 
eradicated.  After  having  secured  union  and  tranquility  to  the 
peoj)le  of  Germany,  and  attained  a  happiness  never  before  allotted 
by  Providence  to  German  warrior  or  statesman,  will  it  not  be  to 
Your  Majesty  a  crowning  glory  now,  in  the  fullness  of  years  and 
in  the  quiet  which  follows  the  mighty  struggles  of  a  most  eventful 
life,  to  reconcile  the  two  younger  branches  of  the  great  Germanic 
family?"     (Cf.  Berlin  Arbitration,  p.  3.) 

On  October  21,  1872,  the  Emperor  decided  as  follows: 

''Have  decreed  the  following  award :  Most  in  accordance  with 
the  true  interpretations  of  the  Treaty  concluded  on  the  15th  of 
June,  1840,  between  the  Governments  of  Her  Britannic  Majesty 
and  the  United  States  of  America,  is  the  claim  of  the  Government 
of  the  United  States  that  the  boundary  line  between  the  territories 
of  Her  Britannic  ^lajesty  and  the  United  States  should  be  drawn 
through  the  Haro  Channel." 

Thus  ended  the  contest  for  Oregon,  80  years,  5  months,  10  days 
after  the  dauntless  courage  and  skillful  seamanship  of  Captain 
Kobert  Gray,  in  the  staunch  little  ship  Columbia,  entering  the 
mouth  of  the  '"Great  River  of  the  West,"  completed  the  great  mari- 
time discoveries  which,  beginning  with  Columbus'  voyage  just 
three  centuries  before,  had  determined  the  form  and  discovered 
the  great  river  systems  of  North  America,  and  gave  us  our  first 
claim  to  the  then  unnamed  region  drained  by  "Columbia's  River," 
as  Gray  named  it. 

This  contest,  the  longest,  the  most  interesting,  the  most  re- 
markable, and  the  most  successful  we  have  ever  waged  for  terri- 
tory, gave  us  possession,  without  war  and  without  any  purchase 
price  (except  the  $0.50,000  paid  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  the 
Puget  Sound  Agricultural  Co.  for  their  "possessory  rights"),  of 
about  202,000  square  miles,  or  nearly  one-twelfth  of  our  area  on 
this  continent,  being  all  for  which  we  had  ever  realhj  contended; 
for  the  "fifty-four  forty  or  fight"  cry  was  the  most  transparent  "bait 
for  gudgeons"  ever  put  into  a  national  platform  to  humbug  the 
ignorant  voters,  and  so  secure  the  election  of  men  who  had  no 
idea,  when  they  should  have  won  the  election,  of  doing  anything 
else  but  compromising  on  49  degrees. 

Considering  the  flimsy  nature  of  the  S])anish  title  based  on  mere 
discovery  and  the  papal  bull  of  Pope  Alexander  VI.,  and  the 
"Treaty  of  I'artition  of  the  Ocean"  of  June  7,  1494,  between  Spain 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  277 

and  Portugal,  not  followed,  for  more  than  two  and  a  half  cen- 
turies, by  the  least  attempt  at  any  permanent  occupation,  or  even 
any  land  exploration,  compared  with  the  British  claim  from  over- 
land exploration  of  Alex.  McKenzie,  in  1793,  and  occupancy  at 
various  points  inland  and  on  the  coast  from  180G  onwards,  of  the 
region  north  of  49  degrees  (where  no  American  had  ever  even  at- 
tempted to  establish  trading  posts  or  form  settlements),  and  the 
claim  of  Great  Britain  to  that  region  by  contiguity — how  could 
we  ever  have  justified  ourselves  in  going  to  war  for  the  region  be- 
tween 49  degrees  and  54  deg.  and  40  min.,  which,  before  Polk's 
election,  we  had  four  times  offered  to  yield  to  Great  Britain,  viz. : 
in  the  negotiations  of  1818  and  1823-24  and  1826-27,  and  in  Secre- 
tary Upshur's  instructions  to  Everett,  on  October  9,  1843? 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  line  of  the  Treaty  of  1840  would 
have  been  gladly  accepted  by  any  administration  at  Washington 
from  the  date  of  the  Louisiana  Purchase  onward  till  it  was  ac- 
complished, 58  years  and  7  months  from  the  beginning  of  our 
diplomatic  struggle  for  Oregon,  in  the  "Instructions  to  our  Com- 
missioners to  negotiate  the  Treaty  of  Ghent,"  to  consent  to  no 
claim  of  Great  Britain  south  of  49  degrees,  and  to  insist  on  includ- 
ing Astoria  in  any  arrangement  for  mutual  restoration  of  places 
captured  during  the  war. 

As  the  whole  oflScial  story  of  the  contest  about  the  San  Juan 
Island  question  is  told  in  a  single  easily  accessible  volume,  ''The 
Berlin  Arbitration,"  it  is  unnecessary  to  write  more  about  it  here. 

Before  leaving  the  governmental  action  on  the  Oregon  acquisi- 
tion it  seems  proper  to  state  compactly  together  the  most  authori- 
tative portion  of  the  absolutely  indisputable  evidence  in  support  of 
the  position  that  according  to  the  very  terms  of  the  Treaty  of 
1818  and  its  renewal  in  1827  no  trading  posts  established  or  set- 
tlements made  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  or  anything  else  done  by 
Great  Britain  could  strengthen  their  claim,  or  weaken  ours,  to 
any  part  of  the  Oregon  territory  while  those  treaties  remained  in 
force. 

That  Benton  and  the  "Oregon  jingoes"  who  followed  his  lead 
constantly  claimed  that  Great  Britain  could  thus  strengthen  her 
claims  and  weaken  ours,  and  that  she  was  constantly  doing  so 
through  operations  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  is  true,  and  it  is  also 
true  that  an  essential  postulate  of  the  Whitman  Legend  is  that 
Great  Britain  could  thus  strengthen  her  claim  and  was  doing  it 
through  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  but  we  shall  find  on  examination 
of  the  text  of  the  treaties  that  this  was  impossible,  and  a  careful 
study  of  the  original  text  of  all  the  negotiations  with  Great  Britain 
on  the  Oregon  boundary  will  show  that  not  only  did  our  Presidents 
and  diplomats  who  managed  those  negotiations  hold  that  nothing 


278  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

that  Great  Britain  could  do  while  those  treaties  remained  in  force 
could  in  the  least  degree  strengthen  her  claims  to  any  part  of 
Oregon,  but  also  that  every  English  diplomat  who  negotiated  on 
the  Oregon  boundary  tacitly  admitted  the  correctness  of  this  view, 
as  no  one  of  them  ever  alleged  that  anything  done  after  October 
20,  1818,  on  sea  or  laud,  had  in  the  least  degree  strengthened  the 
British  claim  to  any  part  of  Oregon,  and,  as  we  shall  see.  Lord 
Aberdeen,  head  of  the  P>ritish  Foreign  OflSce  from  September  2, 
1841,  to  July  (),  1840,  explicitly  assented  to  the  correctness  of  the 
American  contention  that  the  posts  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and 
the  settlements  of  discharged  employes  of  that  company  in  Ore- 
gon could  not  in  any  way  strengthen  the  British  claim  to  any  part 
of  it. 

Let  us  examine  first  the  treaties  themselves. 

The  third  article  of  the  Treaty  of  1818  was  the  only  one  relating 
to  the  Oregon  country  (though  the  name  Oregon  was  not  com- 
monly applied  to  it  till  about  ten  years  later),  and  it  reads  as 
follows : 

"Art.  .'>.  it  is  agreed  that  any  country  that  nmy  be  claimed 
by  either  party  on  the  northwest  coast  of  America,  westward  of 
the  Stony  ^lountains,  shall,  together  with  its  harbors,  bays,  and 
creeks,  and  the  navigation  of  all  rivers  within  the  same,  be  free 
and  open  for  the  term  of  ten  years  from  the  date  of  the  signature 
of  the  present  convention,  to  the  vessels,  citizens,  and  subjects,  of 
the  two  powers ;  it  being  well  understood  that  this  agreement  is  not 
to  be  construed  to  the  prejudice  of  any  claim  which  either  of  the 
two  high  contracting  parties  may  have  to  any  part  of  the  said 
country,  nor  shall  it  be  taken  to  atfect  the  claims  of  any  other 
power  or  state  to  any  part  of  the  said  country;  the  only  object  of 
the  high  contracting  parties,  in  that  respect,  being  to  prevent  dis- 
putes and  differences  among  themselves." 

The  Convention  of  August  9,  1827,  reads  as  follows: 

"Art.  1.  All  the  provisions  of  the  third  article  of  the  conven- 
tion concluded  between  the  L'nited  States  of  America  and  His 
Majesty  the  King  of  the  United  Kingdom  of  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland,  on  the  20th  of  October,  1818,  shall  be,  and  they  are  hereby, 
further  indefinitely  extended  and  continued  in  force,  in  the  same 
manner  as  if  all  the  provisions  of  the  said  article  were  herein 
specifically  recited. 

"Art.  2.  It  shall  be  competent,  however,  to  either  of  the  con- 
tracting parties,  in  case  either  should  think  fit,  at  any  time  after 
the  20th  of  October,  1828,  on  giving  due  notice  of  twelve  months 
to  the  other  contracting  party,  to  annul  and  abrogate  this  conven- 
tion ;  and  it  shall,  in  such  case,  be  accordingly  entirely  annulled 
and  abrogated,  after  the  expiration  of  the  said  terms  of  notice. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  279 

''Art.  3.  Nothing  contained  in  this  convention,  or  in  the  third 
article  of  the  convention  of  the  20th  of  October,  1818,  hereby  con- 
tinued in  force,  shall  be  construed  to  impair,  or  in  any  manner 
affect,  the  claims  which  either  of  the  contracting  parties  may  have 
to  any  part  of  the  country  westward  of  the  Stony  or  Rocky  Moun- 
tains." 

The  significance  of  the  change  in  the  language  of  article  3  in 
this  convention,  when  compared  with  that  of  the  convention  of  1818, 
will  be  seen  on  reading  the  extracts  from  John  Q.  Adams'  speeches, 
with  which  this  chapter  concludes. 

Albert  Gallatin,  one  of  the  ablest  of  all  American  diplomats, 
who  had  negotiated  with  Richard  Rush  the  first  treaty  of  Joint 
Policy  (signed  October  20,  1818),  and  who,  as  our  plenipotentiary, 
conducted  the  negotiations  in  1826  and  1827  which  resulted  in  the 
extension  of  that  joint  occupancy  by  a  treaty  signed  August  6, 
1827,  wrote  a  letter  dated  London,  November  25,  1826,  to  Henry 
Clay,  Secretary  of  State,  describing  the  progress  made  in  the  nego- 
tiations up  to  that  time.  It  is  No.  29,  of  Doc.  458,  Vol,  VI.,  Ameri- 
can State  Papers,  Foreign  Relations  (pp.  652-55),  and  on  p.  653, 
stating  his  discussions  with  the  British  plenipotentiaries,  he 
writes:  ''I  observed,  as  relating  to  the  settlements  of  the  British 
in  that  quarter: 

"1st.  That  those  made  subsequent  to  the  convention  of  1818 
added  nothing  to  the  claims  of  Great  Britain,  the  rights  of  both 
parties  having  been  expressly  reserved  by  that  convention,  which 
allowed  for  a  joint  occupancy." 

This  statement  of  the  purpose  and  effect  of  the  joint  occupancy 
treaty  was  so  obviously  correct  that  the  British  plenipotentiaries 
— though  strenuously  contending  for  the  British  claims  based  on 
alleged  priority  of  discovery  and  occupation,  and  traversing  as  best 
they  could  all  of  our  claims  to  exclusive  right  based  on  priority 
of  discovery,  and  exploration,  and  occupation,  did  not  attempt  to 
make  any  reply  to  this,  nor  set  up  any  claim  based  on  any  settle- 
ments made,  or  new  trading  posts  established  subsequent  to  the 
convention  of  1818. 

July  12,  1845,  Mr.  Buchanan,  Secretary  of  State,  wrote  to  Mr. 
McLane,  our  Minister  at  London,  giving  a  brief  historical  sketch 
of  the  propositions  for  the  adjustment  of  the  Oregon  boundary 
(Cf.  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  489,  29th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  pp.  27-32),  and  on 
p.  29  he  said :  ''The  next  notice  of  this  question  will  be  found  un- 
der the  administration  of  General  Jackson.  It  is  contained  in  the 
instructions  of  Mr.  Livingston  to  Mr.  Van  Buren,  dated  on  the  1st 
of  August,  1831,  with  a  copy  of  which,  so  far  as  they  relate  to  this 
subject,  you  shall  be  furnished.  From  this,  you  will  perceive  that 
General   Jackson's   administration,   so   far   from   objecting   to   the 


280  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

occupation  of  the  whole  territory  by  the  British  in  common  with 
ourselves,  were  entirely  satisfied  to  sufl'er  this  state  of  things  to 
continue.  These  instructions  do  not  i)roceed  upon  the  principle  of 
claiming'  the  whole  territory  for  the  United  States,  although  they 
express  a  strong  opinion  in  favor  of  our  right.''  After  stating  that 
the  term  of  joint  occupation  was  indefinitely  continued  for  the  pur- 
pose, in  the  language  of  the  treaty,  "of  giving  time  to  mature  meas- 
ures which  shall  have  for  their  object  a  more  definite  settlement  of 
the  claims  of  each  party  to  the  said  territory,"  they  go  on  to  remark 
that  ''this  subject,  then,  is  open  for  discussion ;  and  until  the  rights 
of  the  ])arties  can  be  settled  by  negotiation,  ours  can  suiFer  nothing 
by  delay." 

So  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  discover  this  is  all  that  has  ever 
been  printed  of  these  instructions  to  Van  Buren,  but  this  little 
is  suflicient  to  show  that  Jackson,  and  Livingston — and  presum- 
ably Van  Buren — held  to  the  same  opinion  as  Gallatin  had  ex- 
pressed four  years  before. 

This  i)<)sition  was  also  vigorously  asserted  by  Edw.  Everett, 
our  Minister  to  England  in  Tyler's  administration,  and  assented 
to  by  Lord  Aberdeen,  in  November  and  December,  1843,  as  follows : 
''Berlin  Arbitration"  (p.  29),  "No.  18,  Mr.  Everett  to  Mr.  Upshur 
(private  and  confidential),  London,  November  14,  1843.  .  .  . 
Lord  Aberdeen  assented  also  to  my  remark  that  the  numerous  sta- 
tions which  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  had  established  south  of  the 
49th  degree  of  north  latitude  since  the  year  1818,  though  they 
might  and  unquestionably  would  embarrass  the  British  Govern- 
ment in  reference  to  that  company,  and  through  them  in  reference 
to  public  opinion,  ought  not  to  prejudice  the  claims  of  the  United 
States.  This  I  think  a  very  important  point  to  be  kept  firmly  in 
view." 

(Ibid.  p.  32.)  "No.  19,  Mr.  Everett  to  Mr.  Upshur  (confiden- 
tial), London,  December  2,  1843.  .  ..  I  spoke  with  considerable 
earnestness  in  reprobation  of  the  conduct  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
in  mnltii)lying  and  pushing  their  posts  far  to  the  south  of  the 
Columbia,  and  said  I  trusted  that  the  Government  would  not  allow 
itself  to  be  embarrassed  by  this  circumstance.  Fair  warning  had 
been  given  to  the  company  in  1818  that  no  settlements  after  that 
date  should  prejudice  (he  rights  of  either  part}'.  He  (i  e.,  Lord 
Aberdeen)  said  he  did  not  consider  the  existence  of  those  settle- 
ments as  a  very  serious  matter,  but  the  navigation  of  the  Columbia 
was  a  serious  one." 

Precisely  similar  ground  was  taken  by  Hon.  John  C.  Calhoun 
in  his  negotiations  with  Richard  Pakenham. 

Doc.  2,  of  Sen.  Ex.  Doc,  Vol.  I.,  29th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  is  Presi- 
dent T*olk's  Message,  date  December  2,  1845,  with  accompanying 


ACQUISITION   OF    OREGON  281 

documents;  and  one  of  these  documents  is  Exhibit  "A,"  presented 
to  Mr.  Pakenham  at  their  third  conference  (September  2,  1844),  by 
Secretary  Calhoun,  and  in  it  (p.  152),  Calhoun  says:  ^'Another 
negotiation  was  commenced  in  1826,  which  terminated  in  renewing 
on  the  6th  of  August,  1827,  the  third  article  of  the  convention  of 
1818,  prior  to  its  expiration.  It  provided  for  the  indefinite  exten- 
sion of  all  the  provisions  of  the  third  article  of  that  convention, 
and  also  that  either  party  might  terminate  it  at  any  time  it  might 
think  fit,  by  giving  one  year's  notice  after  October  20,  1828.  It 
took,  however,  the  precaution  of  providing  expressly  that  'nothing 
contained  in  this  convention  or  in  the  third  article  of  the  conven- 
tion of  the  20th  of  Octoder,  1818,  herely  continued  in  force,  shall 
te  construed  to  impair  or  in  any  manner  affect  the  claims  which 
either  of  the  contracting  parties  may  have  to  any  part  of  the  coun- 
try westward  of  the  Stony  or  Rocky  Mountains.'  That  convention 
is  now  in  force,  and  has  continued  to  be  so  since  the  expiration  of 
that  of  1818.  By  the  joint  operation  of  the  two,  our  right  to  be 
considered  the  party  in  possession,  and  all  the  claims  we  had  to 
the  territory,  while  in  our  possession,  are  preserved  in  as  full  vigor 
as  they  were  at  the  date  of  its  restoration  in  1818,  without  being 
affected  or  impaired  by  the  settlements  since  made  by  the  subjects 
of  Great  Britain.  Time,  indeed,  so  far  from  impairing  our  claims, 
has  greatly  strengthened  them  since  that  period."  (The  italics 
in  this  extract  are  Calhoun's.) 

This  view  of  the  case  Mr.  Pakenham  did  not  pretend  to  attempt 
to  controvert,  though  traversing  all  of  Mr.  Calhoun's  other  posi- 
tions. Similarly,  Tyler's  administration  having  been  succeeded  by 
Polk's,  and  Calhoun  having  been  succeeded  by  James  Buchanan  as 
Secretary  of  State,  and  the  negotiation  of  the  Oregon  question  with 
Pakenham  continuing,  on  July  12,  1845,  Buchanan  addressed  a 
communication  to  Pakenham — covering  pp.  163-169  of  this  Doc.  No. 
2 — in  which  he  again  offered  the  line  of  49  degrees  to  the  Pacific; 
and,  on  p.  168,  he  says :  "The  title  of  the  United  States  to  the  en- 
tire region  drained  by  the  Columbia  River  and  its  branches  was 
perfect  and  complete  before  the  date  of  the  treaties  of  joint  occu- 
pation of  October,  1818,  and  August,  1827,  and  under  the  express 
provisions  of  those  treaties,  this  title,  whilst  they  endure,  can  never 
be  impaired  by  any  act  of  the  British  Government.  In  the  language 
of  the  treaty  of  1827,  'nothing  contained  in  this  convention,  or  in 
the  third  article  of  the  convention  of  1818  thereby  continued  in 
force,  shall  be  construed  to  impair,  or  in  any  manner  affect  the 
claims  which  either  of  the  contracting  parties  may  have  to  any  part 
of  the  country  westward  of  the  Stony  or  Rocky  Mountains. 

''Had  not  the  convention  contained  this  plain  provision,  which 
has  prevented  the  respective  parties  from  looking  with  jealousy  on 


282  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

the  occupation  of  portions  of  the  territory  by  the  citizens  and  sub- 
jects of  each  other  its  chief  object,  which  was  to  preserve  peace  and 
prevent  collisions  in  those  distant  regions,  would  have  been  en- 
tirely defeated.  It  is  then  manifest  that  neither  the  grant  of  this 
territory  for  a  term  of  years,  made  by  Great  liritain  to  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  in  December,  1821,  nor  the  extension  of  this  grant  in 
1838,  nor  the  settlements,  trading  posts  and  forts  which  have  been 
established  by  that  company  under  it,  can  in  the  slightest  degree 
strengthen  the  Hritish  or  impair  the  American  title  to  any  portion 
of  the  Oregon  Territory.  The  British  claim  is  no  stronger  than  it 
was  on  the  20th  of  October,  1818,  the  date  of  the  first  convention." 

This  contention  as  to  the  effect  of  the  treaty  of  joint  occupancy 
was  so  indisputably  correct  that  Pakenham,  though  replying  vigor- 
ously and  at  length  to  Buchanan's  other  positions,  and  declining 
the  offer  of  49  degrees  as  the  boundary  to  the  Pacific — though  at 
the  hazard  of  war — did  not  even  attempt  any  reply  to  this. 

Greenhow,  who  was  for  years  Librarian  and  Translator  of  the 
State  Department,  and  therefore  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the 
views  of  successive  Presidents  and  Secretaries  of  State,  in  his  "His- 
tory of  Oregon  and  California"  (1845  Ed.,  p.  354),  asserts  the  same 
view  of  the  force  of  the  treaty  of  1827,  as  follows:  "The  advan- 
tages of  the  convention  were,  in  1827,  as  in  1818,  nearly  equal  to 
both  nations ;  but  the  difference  was,  on  the  whole,  in  favor  of  the 
United  States.  The  British  might,  indeed,  derive  more  profit  from 
the  fur  trade  as  carried  on  by  their  organized  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
than  the  Americans  could  expect  to  obtain  by  the  individual  efforts 
of  their  citizens;  but  the  value  of  that  trade  is  much  less  than  is 
generally  su])i»osed;  no  settlements  could  be  formed  in  the  terri- 
tory beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains,  by  which  it  could  acquire  a  popu- 
lation, while  the  arrangement  subsisted ;  and  the  facilities  for  occu- 
pying the  territory  at  a  future  period,  when  its  occupation  by  the 
Ignited  States  should  become  expedient,  would  undoubtedly  have 
increased  in  a  far  greater  ratio  on  their  part  than  on  that  of  Great 
Britain." 

George  Bancroft  (in  Berlin  Arbitration,  p.  139),  says:  "In 
that  same  year,  while  everything  was  still  fresh  in  memory,  Mr. 
Buchanan  had  recorded  his  interpretation  of  the  treaty  in  an  in- 
struction to  Mr.  Bancroft,  the  American  Minister  at  London,  who, 
as  his  colleague  in  Washington,  had  taken  part  in  its  negotiation 
and  knew  every  step  of  its  progress." 

Id.  (p.  12(5)  Bancroft  says:  "As  to  settlements  properly  so- 
called,  there  could  be  none;  for  under  the  British  treaty  with  Spain, 
and  the  treaty  of  non-occupation  between  the  ITnited  States  and 
Great  Britain,  impliedly  at  least,  there  could  be  no  grants  or  hold- 
ings of  territory  by  individuals  or  companies  of  either  party." 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  283 

If  any  man  that  ever  lived  knew  what  was  the  true  meaning  and 
intent  of  these  articles  in  the  treaties  of  1818  and  1827,  it  was  John 
Quincy  Adams,  who,  as  Secretary  of  State  under  Monroe,  wrote  the 
treaty  of  1818,  and  as  President  in  1827  directed  every  step  of  the 
negotiations  which  resulted  in  the  treaty  of  August  6,  1827,  and 
with  two  extracts  from  his  speeches  on  Oregon  in  the  House  of  Rep- 
resentatives on  February  9  and  April  13,  1846,  I  will  close  this  ex- 
position of  governmental  action  to  secure  Oregon.  February  9,  1846 
(Cf.  Cong.  Globe,  p.  340),  Mr.  Adams  said:  "And  here  I  beg  leave 
to  repeat  an  idea  that  I  have  already  expressed  before,  and  that  is, 
that  there  is  a  very  great  misapprehension  of  the  real  merits  of  this 
case,  founded  on  the  misnomer  which  declares  that  convention  to  be 
a  convention  of  joint  occupation.  Sir,  it  is  not  a  convention  of 
joint  occupation.  It  is  a  convention  of  non-occupation — a  promise 
on  the  part  of  both  parties  that  neither  of  the  parties  will  occupy 
the  territory  for  an  indefinite  space;  first  for  ten  years;  then  until 
the  notice  shall  be  given  from  one  party  to  the  other  that  the  con- 
vention shall  be  terminated"  ...  (p.  341,  3d  col.)  "All  these 
titles  are  imperfect. 

"Discovery  is  therefore  no  title  of  itself.  The  discovery  of  a 
river  and  of  land  is  no  title  of  itself.  Exploration  comes  next.  That 
gives  something  more  of  a  title.  Continuity  and  contiguity  both 
concur  to  give  a  title.  They  are  none  of  them  perfect  in  them- 
selves. There  is  nothing  complete  in  the  way  of  title  but  actual 
possession ;  and  that  is  the  only  thing  we  now  want,  to  have  a  per- 
fect, clear,  indisputable  and  undoubted  right  to  the  territory  of 
Oregon.  It  is  possession — it  is  occupation,  if  you  please.  Well,  sir, 
we  Mve  made  two  conventions  with  Great  Britain — one  in  1818,  one 
in  1827 — by  which  we  have  not  agreed  to  anything  like  joint  occu- 
pation. Sir,  in  the  days  of  Sir  John  Falstaff,  so  facetiously  alluded 
to  by  the  gentleman  from  Ohio  (Mr.  Starkweather)  the  other  day, 
he  says  'a  captain;'  these  villains  will  make  the  word  'captain'  as 
odious  as  the  word  'occupy,'  which  was  an  excellent  good  word  be- 
fore it  was  ill-sorted.  Now  this  'occupation'  is  as  'odious'  in  some 
parts  as  Sir  John  Falstaff  said  the  word  'occupy'  was  in  his 
time  after  it  had  been  ill-sorted.  There  is  no  occupation  now.  Oc- 
cupation is  the  thing  we  want.  Occupation  is  what  I  aim  for  put- 
ting an  end  to  that  convention  for;  because  it  says  we  shall  not 
occupy  that  territory." 

April  13,  1846  (Cf.  Cong.  Globe,  p.  664),  Mr.  Adams  said:  "But 
in  that  convention  of  1818  it  was  merely  stipulated  that  we  should 
not  make  settlements,  that  is,  that  we  should  not  occupy,  and  that 
same  stipulation  was  binding  upon  Great  Britain  as  well  as  upon 
us.    It  was  not  only  a  total  misnomer,  but  a  total  perversion  of  the 


284  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

whole  question  of  right,  to  call  that  convention  a  convention  of  joint 
occn]»ation — it  was  a  convention  of  non-occupation. 

''And,  in  making  this  convention  with  Great  Britain  we  stipu- 
lated formally  to  reserve  the  right  of  'any  third  Power' — that  is  to 
say  the  right  of  Spain,  for  no  other  Power  but  Spain  had  any  claim 
— and  it  was  reserved  in  the  convention  of  1818,  as  Mr.  Adams 
showed  when  he  was  up  before"  (i.  e.,  on  February  9,  184G,  p.  342, 
col.  1,  W,  I.  M.)  "from  the  words  of  the  convention  itself.  The  year 
after  that  Spain  ceded  to  us  all  her  right  upon  the  whole  of  that 
coast  from  42  degrees  north.  Those  rights,  then,  which  we  had  re- 
served, by  compact  with  Great  Britain  in  the  convention  of  1818, 
were  all  transferred  to  us;  and  when  in  the  year  1827  we  came  to 
renew  that  convention  for  an  indefinite  period,  it  was  made  in  the 
same  form  as  the  convention  of  1818,  leaving  out  the  reservation  and 
thereby,  on  the  part  of  Great  Britain  as  well  as  ourselves,  admitting 
that  the  United  States  were  entitled  to  all  the  claims  and  pretensions 
of  Spain."  Then  after  discussing  the  claim  of  Great  Britain  that 
under  the  Nootka  Sound  convention  she  was  entitled  to  at  least  equal 
rights  with  the  United  States  in  Oregon  he  says  (p.  064,  2d  col.)  : 
"Now  in  the  Nootka  Sound  convention,  the  substance  of  which  was 
the  same  as  our  conventions  with  Great  Britain  of  the  year  1818 
and  the  year  1827,  the  word  'settlement'  was  included ;  that  was  to 
say,  that  Spain  agreed  that  the  subjects  of  Great  Britain  should 
have  the  right  of  navigation,  and  trading  with  the  savages,  and  of 
settlement."  .  .  .  (3d  col.)  "I  say  that  if  Great  Britain  was 
entitled  to  make  settlements  by  the  treaty  of  Nootka  Sound,  in  1790, 
she  has  forfeited  and  abandoned  that  right  by  the  omission  of  the 
word  in  the  conventions  of  1818  and  1827.  In  1818  the  convention 
was  made  between  us  and  Great  Britain,  Great  Britain  claimed  at 
that  time  the  i)rivileges  of  the  Nootka  Sound  convention;  but  she 
did  not  choose  to  claim  the  right  to  make  settlements  for  the  limited 
time  of  ten  years.  That  convention  itself  excluded  it;  it  left  out 
that  word  'settlements,'  copying  the  Nootka  Sound  convention  in  all 
other  respects,  leaving  the  country  open  for  navigation,  commerce, 
and  trade  with  the  savages.  Why  did  they  leave  out  that  word  'set- 
tlement'? There  was  no  reason  assigned  for  leaving  it  out;  but  if 
it  had  been  included,  we  should  have  had  the  right  of  settlement  as 
well  as  they.  They  forfeited  it;  they  renounced  it  by  omitting  the 
word  'settlement'  in  the  convention  of  1818,  and  it  continues  to  be 
omitted  to  this  day.  In  1827,  when  the  convention  came  to  be  re- 
newed, an  indefinite  time  was  assigned  instead  of  ten  years;  and 
there  again  the  reservation  of  rights  of  any  third  Power  whose  rights 
were  reserved  before,  and  the  word  'settlement'  continued  to  be 
omitted :  Great  Britain  having  no  right  under  that  convention  to 
make  anv  settlements  whatever." 


CHAPTER    VII. 

THE   TRUTH   ABOUT  THE  RELATION   OF   THE   HUDSON'S 
BAY    CO.    TO    AMERICAN   EXPLORATION,    OCCUPATION, 
AND   SETTLEMENT  OF  THE  OREGON  TERRITORY,  AS 
APPEARS  FROM  A  CAREFUL  STUDY  OF  ALL  THE  AC- 
CESSIBLE    CONTEMPORANEOUS     LETTERS,     DIA- 
RIES,   REPORTS     TO     THE     GOVERNMENT,    AND 
BOOKS    WRITTEN     BY     THE     AMERICAN    FUR 
TRADERS,  SCIENTISTS,  PLEASURE  TRAVEL- 
ERS,   MISSIONARIES,    AND    LEADERS    OF 
PARTIES  OF  EMIGRANTS,  DOWN  TO  THE 
SIGNING    OF    THE    TREATY    OF    JUNE 
15,     1846,     FIXING     THE     BOUNDARY. 

Intimately  connected  with  this  question  is  the  history  of  the 
contest  between  the  North  West  Co.  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
(1805-1821)  and  the  founding  of  the  Red  River  Colony,  near  the 
site  of  the  present  city  of  Winnipeg,  Manitoba,  in  1811-12,  its  de- 
struction in  1815,  and  again  in  1816,  and  the  consolidation  of 
the  two  companies  in  1821. 

To  fully  understand  the  motive  which  led  to  the  establishment 
of  the  Red  River  Colony,  and  its  success  in  forcing  the  consolida- 
tion of  the  North  West  and  Hudson's  Bay  companies,  one  must  read 
the  equivalent  of  about  3,000  pages  like  this,  in  the  following  list  of 
12  books,  all  but  the  first  two  of  which  are  so  very  rare  that  I  have 
never  seen  but  one  full  set — that  in  the  Ayer  Collection  of  the  New- 
berry Library,  Chicago. 

(1)  "Observation  on  the  Present  State  of  the  Highlands  of 
Scotland,  with  a  View  of  the  Causes  and  Probable  Consequences 
of  Emigration.  By  the  Earl  of  Selkirk."  Edinburgh,  1805,  p.  232, 
and  Appendix  LXI.  equal  283. 


286  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

(2)  ''Sketch  of  the  British  Fur  Trade  in  North  America.  By 
the  Earl  of  Selkirk/"    London,  1810,  p.  130. 

(3  "Letter.s  to  the  Honorable  the  Earl  of  Selkirk  on  His  Set- 
tlement at  the  Red  River.  By  Rev.  John  Strachan,  D.  D.,  Rector 
of  York  (now  Toronto),  T'p|)er  Canada."    London,  1816,  p.  76. 

(4)  "Narrative  of  Transactions  in  the  Red  River  Country  from 
the  Commencement  of  the  Operations  of  the  Earl  of  Selkirk  till 
the  Summer  of  the  Year  1816.  By  Alexander  McDonnell."  Lon- 
don, 1819,  pp.  152  and  87.  This  is  the  North  West  Co.'s  side 
of  the  case. 

(;"))  ^'Statement  Respecting?  the  Earl  of  Selkirk's  Settlement 
of  Kildonan  I'pon  the  Red  Riv'er  in  North  America,  Its  Destruction 
in  1815-16,  and  the  Massacre  of  Governor  Semple  and  His  Party." 
London,  1817,  pp.  125  and  89.  This  was  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  side 
of  the  case. 

(6)  "Statement  Respectiuf?  the  Earl  of  Selkirk's  Settlement," 
etc.  (as  above)  ''with  Observations  Upon  a  Narrative  of  Occur- 
rences in  the  Indian  Countries"  (i.  e.,  upon  Alex.  McDonnell's 
book,  No.  4  above).  Loudon,  1818;  New  York,  1818,  pp.  194  and 
C  equal  294. 

(Like  No.  5,  this  is  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  side  of  the  case,  and 
thoujjh  no  author  is  jjiven  they  were  both  written  by  John  Halket, 
a  London  lawyer,  and  a  brother-in-law  of  the  Earl  of  Selkirk. 
— W.  I.  M.) 

(7)  "Narrative  of  John  Pritchard,  Pierre  Chrysologue  Pam- 
brun  of  Montreal,  formerly  Lieutenant  in  the  Voltiguer  Corps  of 
Lower  Canada,  and  Frederick  Damien  Heurter,  late  Acting  Ser- 
geant INfajor  and  Clerk  in  the  Regiment  De  Mueron,  Respecting  the 
Aggressions  of  the  North  West  Co.  against  the  Earl  of  Sel- 
kirk's Settlement  upon  the  Red  River."    London,  1819,  p.  91. 

This  is,  of  course,  on  the  fludson's  Bay  Co.'s  side  of  the  case. 

(8)  "Letter  Book  of  Capt.  Miles  McDonnell,  First  Governor 
of  the  Red  River  Colony."  ("From  the  Canadian  Archives.")  Only 
a  fragment,  covering  pp.  187-226.    No  date. 

(9)  ''Letter  to  the  Earl  of  Liverpool  by  the  Earl  of  Selkirk, 
on  the  subject  of  the  Red  River  Settlement."  London,  1819,  p.  224. 
This  is,  of  course,  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  side  of  the  case. 

(10)  "Report  of  I'roceedings  connected  with  the  Dispute  be- 
tween the  Earl  of  Selkirk  and  the  North  West  Co.  at  the  Assizes 
held  at  York,  in  T^.  C,  October,  1818.  From  Minutes  Taken  in 
Court."     Montreal  and  London,  1819,  pp.  424  and  48. 

(11)  "Report  of  Trials  in  the  Courts  of  Canada  Relative  to  the 
Destruction  of  the  Earl  of  Selkirk's  Settlement  on  the  Red  River, 


ACQUISITION   OF    OREGON  287 

with  Observations  by  A.  Amos."  London,  1820,  (No.  11  is  the 
same  as  No.  10,  with  the  addition  of  "Observations"  by  A.  Amos, 
a  London  lawyer  in  the  employ  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  These 
"Observations"  were  designed  to  make  the  official  "Report"  seem 
less  unfavorable  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  to  Lord  Selkirk. 
— W.  I.  M.) 

(12)  "Papers  Relating  to  the  Red  River  Settlement.  Ordered 
printed  by  the  House  of  Commons,  July  19,  1819."    Folio  287  p. 

Titles  (3),  (10)  and  (12)  are  the  ones  on  which  I  have  mainly 
depended. 

How  vital  is  the  connection  between  the  story  of  the  reasons  for 
and  results  of  the  founding  of  the  Red  River  Colony,  and  the  treat- 
ment by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  of  the  Indians  in  Oregon,  and  the 
relations  between  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  the  Americans  in  Ore- 
gon from  1828  to  1846  will  appear  later. 

The  matters  stated  in  these  books  also  are  of  great  value  as 
showing  the  total  falsity  of  the  assertion — so  often  made  with  a 
self-complacent  air  of  superiority  by  Englishmen  wholly  ignorant 
of  this  dismal  chapter  in  their  history,  and  echoed  by  the  few 
equally  ignorant  and  very  snobbish  Americans,  who  always  delight 
in  belittling  their  own  country,  and  who,  wherever  they  are,  "always 
turn  up  their  trousers  when  it  rains  in  'dear  old  Lunnon,'  "  that 
"the  English  always  get  along  much  better  with  the  Indians  than 
the  Americans,"  for  the  story  of  this  contest  between  rival  British 
fur  companies,  especially  after  the  consolidation  of  the  leading 
Canadian  companies  in  1805,  under  the  name  of  the  North  West 
Co.,  demonstrates  beyond  any  possibility  of  dispute  that  in  all  the 
vast  regions  where  these  two  equally  loyal  British  companies — the 
North  West  Co.  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. — came  in  competition  for 
many  years,  not  with  Americans,  but  with  each  other,  the  Indians 
were  thoroughly  debased,  and  as  greatly  injured  in  morals  by  the 
greed  and  selfishness  of  these  two  British  corporations,  and  their 
determination  to  over  reach  each  other,  even  if  to  do  it  wholesale 
robbery  and  murder  alike  of  Indians  and  whites  were  needful  to 
accomplish  their  purposes,  as  Indians  ever  were  anywhere  in  the 
United  States  or  British  America. 

We  have  seen  in  Chapter  IV.  that  the  North  West  Co.,  the  great 
Canadian  fur  company,  was  the  competitor  Astor  feared,  and  that  it 
was  that  company  which,  aided  by  the  breaking  out  of  the  war  of 
1812,  finally  wrought  the  undoing  of  the  Astoria  enterprise,  and,  at 
the  same  time  by  a  cunningly  devised  scheme  of  purchase  forestalled 
the  capture  of  Astoria  by  His  Majesty's  ship  Raccoon,  and  gather- 
ing all  the  profits  into  the  coffers  of  the  North  West  Co.,  tricked 
Capt.  Black  and  his  officers  and  crew  out  of  the  snug  fortune  which 
they  had  expected  to  realize  as  prize  money  by  the  capture,  not 


288  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

merely  of  a  nide  blockhouse,  but  oi"  an  immense  stock  of  furs  and 
merchandise  belonging  to  an  American  fur  company. 

And  in  rha])tor  VI.  we  have  seen  that  the  Xorth  West  Co.  re- 
mained in  charge  of  Astoria  for,  as  they  had  renamed  it,  Fort 
George),  when,  on  October  0,  1818,  it  was  unconditionally  restored 
to  us  by  Great  Britain. 

At  that  time  the  Hudson's  IJay  Co.  not  only  liad  no  post  within 
many  hundred  miles  of  any  part  of  the  Oregon  Territory,  but  had 
none  in  British  America  west  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  yet  less  than 
two  and  one-half  years  later,  on  March  26,  1821,  the  North  West 
Co..  which  had  explored  British  America  north  to  the  Arctic  and 
west  to  the  Pacific,  was  blotted  out  of  existence  by  a  consolidation 
with  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  the  terms  of  which,  while  probably  the 
best  that  could  then  be  obtained,  and  perhaps  somewhat  equitable 
as  to  future  conduct  of  business  and  division  of  profits,  yet,  con- 
sidering their  relative  enterprise  in  exploring  and  in  developing 
the  fur  trade,  certainly  gave  a  disproportionately  large  share  of 
its  benefits  to  the  older,  but  far  less  enterprising  and  energetic  com- 
pany. (Cf.  for  the  terms  of  this  consolidation  ''The  Hudson's  Bay 
Territories,"  etc.,  by  R.  M.  Martin,  London,  1840,  p.  50 ;  "The  Cana- 
dian Northwest,  Its  History  and  Its  Troubles,"  by  G.  Mercer 
Adams,  Toronto,  1885,  p.  145;  '^History  of  the  Great  Company," 
by  Beckles  Willson,  Toronto,  1899,  pp.  433-5.) 

The  License  of  Exclusive  right  to  trade  with  Indians  in  all  such 
parts  of  British  America  "as  shall  not  form  any  part  of  our  prov- 
ince in  North  America,"  and  of  the  exclusive  right  as  against  any 
other  British  subjects  to  trade  with  Indians  in  the  region  which 
afterwards  came  to  be  known  as  Oregon,  was  granted  by  the  English 
government  on  December  (I.  1821,  for  the  period  of  21  years,  to  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  and  W.  McGillivray,  of  Montreal,  and  S.  Mc- 
Gillivray  and  E.  Ellice,  of  P]ngland  (the  last  three  representing 
the  North  West  Co.),  though  the  business  was  to  be  carried  on  only 
in  the  name  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 

"In  1824  the  claims  of  the  North  West  Co.  were  extinguished  by 
mutual  consent,"  though  as  the  rights  of  the  "Norwesters"  to  stock 
in  the  consolidated  comj)any  remained  unchanged,  this  1824  agree- 
ment seems  to  have  been  merely  a  technical  change  for  administra- 
tive and  bookkeeping  convenience,  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  thence- 
forward was  the  sole  owner  of  the  rights  under  this  license. 

May  30th,  1838,  the  company  surrendered  this  license,  and  re- 
ceived in  lieu  thereof  another  similar  grant  for  21  years  from  that 
date.  (Cf.  for  the  copies  of  the  Consolidation  agreements  of  March 
26,  1821,  and  of  15th  of  September,  1824.  "A.  2"  and  "A.  3,"  pp. 
277-312,  Vol.  1,  H.  B.  Co.  vs.  U.  S.,  and  for  copies  of  the  Licenses 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  289 

of  Exclusive  trade  of  December  6th,  1821,  and  May  30,  1838,  Idem 
"A.  4"  and  "A.  5,"  pp.  312-319.) 

How  came  this  consolidation  (which  had  been  first  recommended 
by  McKenzie  on  pp.  433-7  of  his  "Voyages  from  Montreal  Through 
the  Continent  of  North  America  to  the  Frozen  and  Pacific  Oceans." 
London,  1801)  to  be  effected? 

Thos.  Douglas,  fifth  Earl  of  Selkirk,  was  a  very  thrifty  Scotch 
nobleman,  much  inclined  to  '^safe''  speculations  (i.  f.,  when  he  pos- 
sessed such  inside  information  as  would  not  merely  secure  him  from 
loss,  but  assure  him  ample  profit). 

He  was  also  so  thorough  a  believer  in  ''the  right  divine  of  kings 
to  govern  wrong"  that  it  grieved  him  much  to  observe  that  many 
a  native-born  British  subject — Englishman,  Scotchman  or  Irishman 
— was  migrating  to  the  United  States,  and  so  generally  prospering 
there  that  their  correspondence  with  those  left  behind  was  con- 
stantly swelling  the  number  of  those  who  deserted  the  monarchy 
for  the  republic,  and  speedily  learned  that  a  nation  could  prosper 
better  without  kings,  and  earls,  and  dukes  and  barons  than  with 
them. 

His  Lordship  thereupon  thriftily  determined  to  exert  all  his 
influence  to  turn  this  migration  from  the  Ignited  States  to  the  Brit- 
ish colonies,  and,  at  the  same  time,  thereby  to  increase  his  own 
already  ample  fortune. 

His  first  essays  in  establishing  colonies  were  in  1803,  on  Prince 
Edward's  Island,  and  speedily  thereafter  at  Baldoon,  in  the  ex- 
treme southwest  part  of  Upper  Canada,  on  a  small  creek  that  flows 
into  Lake  St.  Clair. 

In  connection  with  this  latter  project  he  visited  Canada,  and 
what  followed  is  told  in  "A  Narrative  of  Transactions,"  etc.,  by 
Alex.  McDonnell,  as  follows: 

(P.  1)  "Previous  to  the  year  1806,  the  Earl  of  Selkirk  had  been 
engaged  in  various  landed  and  colonizing  speculations  in  British 
North  America,  in  the  course  of  which  he  visited  Canada. 

"In  the  course  of  his  travels  his  attention  was  naturally  directed 
to  the  situation  of  the  trade,  and  particularly  to  that  carried  on 
with  the  Indians  in  the  barter  of  manufactured  goods  and  other 
articles  for  furs  and  peltries,  which  ever  since  the  discovery  of  and 
establishment  of  the  colony  by  the  French  had  been  considered  as 
the  chief  branch  of  its  commerce. 

"During  His  Lordship's  residence  in  Montreal  he  was  received 
with  the  hospitality  which  so  much  characterizes  the  inhabitants 
of  that  city,  and  to  none  was  he  indebted  for  more  pointed  atten- 
tions and  civility  than  to  the  merchants  connected  with  the  fur 
trade,  and  more  especially  the  partners  of  the  North  West  Co. 
His  inquiries  into  the  nature  and  extent  of  the  trade,  and  their 


200  .[f'QT'JsTTTOX    OF    ORFdOX 

particular  establisliineiit,  wliicli  has  alwaj's  been  au  (p.  2)  object 
of  (MiriositY  to  strangers  visitinji'  Canada,  were  readily  answered 
by  ilicse  jientlemen,  who  withheld  no  information  which  could 
•iratity  the  liberal  and  useful  researches  of  a  noble  traveler.  They 
reuiarked  at  the  time  that  these  inquiries  were  more  extended  than 
usual;  but  they  little  expected  that  their  confidential  communica- 
tions to  a  persim  ex])ressiu<i-  his  admiration  at  the  result  of  their 
exertions,  and  his  sincere  friendship  and  thankful  acknowledg- 
ments to  themselves,  should  have  awakened  the  spirit  of  self-interest 
which  has  subsequently  been  so  apparent;  still  less  did  they  sup- 
pose they  were  ])lacing  means  in  the  hands  of  a  conmiercial  rival,  to 
be  applied  first  in  opi)osition  to  their  trade,  and,  after  the  failure 
of  that  experiment,  in  an  attempt  to  etfect  the  ruin  of  their  estab- 
lishment. 

"On  the  noble  Lord's  return  to  England  he  prosecuted  with  much 
anxiety  the  inquiries  he  had  commenced  in  Canada  connected  with 
this  subject,  and  the  situation  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  with  the 
great  advantages  under  which  the  fur  trade  might  be  conducted 
from  Hudson's  Bay,  when  compared  with  the  obstacles  and  difficul- 
ties opposed  lo  the  Canadian  merchants,  soon  presented  themselves 
to  his  discernment.  The  route  to  the  remote  and  most  valuable  trad- 
ing stations  in  the  Northwest  country  was  nearly  2,000  miles  more 
distant  by  interior  communication  from  ^Montreal  than  from  Hud- 
son's Bay,  and  it  was  evident,  if  the  assumed  (p.  3)  rights  of  this 
chartered  comj)any  to  the  exclusive  commerce  and  navigation  of  the 
bay  were  legal,  by  a  strict  enforcement  of  them  the  whole  fur  trade 
might  be  diverted  into  that  channel. 

"His  Lordship  communicated  his  ideas  on  the  subject,  though 
very  partially,  to  a  gentleman  then  in  England,  who  had  been  long 
interested  in  the  North  West.  Co.,  and  to  whom  the  public  are  in- 
debted for  a  descri})tion  of  the  country  and  of  his  own  voyages  and 
discoveries  (/.  e.,  Alex.  McKenzie. — ^^^  L  M.) 

"Tn  consequence  of  this  communication,  an  agreement  was  subse- 
quently entered  into  by  I^ord  Selkirk  and  this  gentleman  to  specu- 
late in  the  stock  of  the  Hud.son's  Bay  Co.,  without  any  definite  object 
on  the  part  of  His  Lordship's  associate,  beyond  ])Ossibly  a  resale  at 
an  enhanced  price,  when  a  sufficient  amount  should  have  been  pro- 
cured to  enable  them  to  exercise  a  beneficial  inlluence  in  the  man- 
agement of  the  com]»any's  concerns,  and  thereby  to  increase  the  value 
of  their  stock.  The  moment  was  peculiarly  favorable  for  their  pur- 
pose: the  stock  of  the  company  had  fallen  from  250  per  cent,  to  be- 
tween 50  and  00,  in  consequence  of  misfortune  or  mismanagement 
of  their  affairs,  which  were  in  a  state  of  rapid  decay  and  considered 
bordering  upon  insolvency,  no  dividend  having  been  paid  for  several 
years.    Tender  such  circumstances  considerable  purchases  were  easily 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  291 

made  by  the  parties,  but  His  Lordship's  (p.  4)  views  becoming  en- 
larged, with  the  extended  knowledge  he  obtained  of  the  supposed 
rights  conferred  upon  the  company  by  its  charter,  a  disagreement 
took  place  as  to  the  further  objects  they  had  originally  in  view ;  and 
after  some  legal  proceedings  an  arrangement  was  made  between  the 
parties,  by  which  Lord  Selkirk  became  proprietor  of  the  greatest 
part  of  the  stock  acquired  on  their  joint  account. 

''Being  thus  disengaged  from  any  connection  which  could  inter- 
fere with  his  views,  and  having  established  for  himself  a  sufficient 
footing  in  the  affairs  of  the  company,  Lord  Selkirk  extended  his  pur- 
chases to  the  amount  of  nearly  £40,000,  the  whole  amount  of  the 
company's  stock  being  rather  under  £100,000.  Several  members  of 
the  committee  immediately  made  way  for  the  appointment  of  his 
near  relatives  and  friends  to  the  direction,  and  from  this  period  His 
Lordship  may  be  considered  as  possessing  an  unlimited  influence 
and  control  in  the  management  of  the  affairs  and  disposal  of  the 
property  of  the  company.  Although  more  activity  was  perceived  in 
the  general  conduct  of  their  concerns,  some  time  elapsed  before  His 
Lordship's  ultimate  object  and  plans  were  disclosed ;  but  his  prep- 
arations being  made,  a  general  court  was  convened  by  public  notice 
in  the  month  of  May,  1811.  The  proprietors  were  informed  at  this 
meeting  that  the  Governor  and  committee  considered  it  beneficial 
to  their  general  (p.  5)  interests  to  grant  His  Lordship  in  fee  simple 
about  116,000  square  miles  (or  74,240,000  acres)  of  what  was  sup- 
posed to  be  their  territory  on  condition  that  he  should  establish  a 
colony  on  the  grant  and  furnish  on  certain  terms  from  among  the 
settlers  such  laborers  as  are  required  by  the  company  in  their  trade. 
The  proprietors  did  not  see  in  these  conditions  any  sufficient  con- 
sideration for  the  grant,  and  every  one  present,  with  the  exception 
of  the  noble  Lord  and  the  committee,  signed  and  delivered  a  protest 
vs.  it  to  the  court.  Notwithstanding  this  opposition  the  grant  was 
confirmed,  and  His  Lordship  became  the  ideal  proprietor  of  a  do- 
main exceeding  in  extent  the  Kingdom  of  England,  with  only  one 
objection  to  the  title,  that  with  respect  to  the  right  of  the  grantors 
they  had  equal  power  to  assign  him  a  similar  kingdom  in  the  moon. 

''In  addition  to  the  protest  offered  by  the  proprietors,  remon- 
strances were  made  against  the  wild  and  hopeless  project  of  estab- 
lishing the  proposed  colony  by  every  person  interested  in  the  trade 
of  the  country.     .     .     . 

"The  distance  between  the  spot  where  the  first  settlement  was 
afterward  formed  and  York  Factory  in  Hudson's  Bay,  the  point  of 
communication  (p.  6)  with  the  sea,  is  by  actual  measurement  725 
miles;  and  the  navigation,  such  as  it  is,  may  be  called  open  between 
the  months  of  June  and  October.  .  .  .  The  distance  of  the  Bed 
Eiver  from  Lake  Superior  is  rather  greater  than  from  Hudson's  Bay, 


2!)2  ACQUISITIOX    OF    OREGOX 

and  Iroiii  Montreal,  by  tlie  nearest  route  (that  of  Lake  Superior), 
about  2,.'{00  miles.  Tlie  distance  i'rom  the  nearest  inhabited  ])art  of 
Upper  Canada,  which  may  possibly  be  another  colony  of  Lord  Sel- 
kirk's, called  IJakloon.  is  about  1,()()0  miles. 

"It  must  be  obvious,  from  the  distances  here  described,  and  the 
dilhculty  of  communication,  which  is  only  [)racticable  in  birch  bark 
canoes,  that  no  market  could  be  found  beyond  the  immediate  con- 
sum])tion  of  the  colony  for  the  a jjri cultural  product  of  a  settlement 
so  situated. 

Idem  (p.  9)  "To  the  North  West  (V).  this  establishment  was  par- 
ticularly objectionable.  They  denied  the  rij>;ht  of  either  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.  or  Lord  Selkirk  to  any- part  of  the  territory  ceded  to  him, 
of  which  their  ])i'edecessors  and  themselves  had  been  in  occu])ancy 
for  at  least  a  century.  They  were  aware  that  it  was  further  in- 
tended to  enforce  against  them  the  penalties  provided  by  the  char- 
ter of  seizure  of  their  persons  and  confiscation  of  their  })roperty  as 
interlopers  on  the  territories  absurdly  claimed  by  the  company;  and 
they  saw  in  the  terms  on  which  the  grant  was  made  that  the  estab- 
lishment of  this  colony  was  only  a  pretext  to  induce  settlers  to  emi- 
grate and  thus  to  introduce  into  the  country  at  an  inconsiderable 
expense  a  suHicient  number  of  persons  to  carry  into  effect  (p.  30) 
the  Xoble  Lord's  plans  of  aggression  and  com})etition  r,s'.  their  trade. 
The  North  West  Co.  was  founded  in  1783  by  an  association  of 
traders,  prior  to  that  time  engaged  in  rival  undertakings,  and  who, 
on  the  conquest  of  Canada,  following  the  footsteps  of  their  prede- 
cessors, the  French  colonists,  had  engaged  in  the  trade." 

TTow  drastic  were  the  measures  by  which  the  Noble  Lord  meant 
to  utterly  ruin  the  trade  of  the  North  West  Co.,  or  so  injure  it  as 
to  force  the  consolidation  of  the  two,  by  asserting  and  enforcing  in 
the  most  arbitrary  manner,  over  all  this  vast  wilderness,  to  which 
the  North  West  Co.  denied  that  either  the  Earl  or  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  had  any  rights  of  ownership,  the  same  rights  as  owner  in  fee 
simple,  that  an  Englishman  would  be  allowed  to  exercise  respect- 
ing the  lawns  and  flower  gardens  on  his  private  estate  in  Great 
Britain,  may  be  seen  from  this  extract  from  a  letter  from  the  Earl 
of  Selkirk  to  ^Mr.  William  Hillier,  a  principal  agent  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co. :  ''You  must  give  them  solemn  warning  that  the  land  be- 
longs to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  and  that  they  must  remove  from  it; 
after  this  warning  they  should  not  be  allowed  to  cut  any  timber 
either  for  building  or  fuel  ;  wliat  they  have  cut  should  be  oj^enly  and 
forcibly  seized  and  their  buildings  destroyed.  In  like  manner  they 
should  be  w\nrned  not  to  fish  in  your  waters,  and  if  they  put  down 
nets,  seize  them  as  you  would  in  Englaiid  those  of  a  ])oacher.  We 
{ire  so  fully  advised  of  tbe  unim])eachable  validity  of  these  rights 
of  property,  that  there  can  be  no  scruple  in  enforcmgthem  wherever 


ACQUISITION^    OF    OREGON  293 

you  have  the  physical  means."  (Cf.  ''Papers  Relating  to  the  Red 
River  Settlement,"  p.  154.) 

As  his  grant  covered  for  several  hundred  miles  the  only  possible 
line  of  travel  for  the  "North  Westers,"  from  their  great  headquar- 
ters, at  Fort  William,  on  the  north  shore  of  Lake  Superior,  to  the 
Rocky  Mountain  and  Pacific  Coast  regions,  which  their  enterprise 
had  explored,  and  where  by  far  the  greater  and  more  valuable  part 
of  their  fur  trade  was  found,  they  would  have  been  something  very 
much  more  or  less  than  human  if  they  had  not  determined  to  resist 
to  the  utmost  these  monstrous  pretensions  of  a  right  to  prevent  them 
from  navigating  the  streams  and  lakes,  and  traveling  OAer  the  port- 
ages, and  catching  fish  and  killing  game  for  their  subsistence  in  the 
vast  unsettled  wilderness  where  they  and  their  predecessors  in  in- 
terest had  enjoyed  these  rights  undisturbed  for  several  generations, 
while  it  was  ''only  twenty-five  years  since  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  first 
made  an  establishment  on  Red  River"  (Cf.  "Papers  Relating  to  the 
Red  River  Settlement,"  p.  165). 

This  aggression  was  not,  however,  attempted  to  its  fullest  extent 
at  first,  and  so  o])en  hostilities  did  not  begin  with  the  very  founding 
of  the  colony,  though  there  had  been  for  several  years  not  only  a 
very  vigorous,  but  often  a  very  unscrupulous  competition  between 
the  traders  of  the  two  companies,  which  had  thoroughly  demoralized 
the  Indians  about  all  the  regions  where  both  the  companies  sought 
the  trade  of  the  natives.  (Cf.  on  this  article  in  London  and  West- 
m/inster  Review,  Vol.  29,  April  to  August,  1838,  pp.  373-392,  as  fol- 
lows: "The  Indians,  without  doubt,  would  have  been  more  numer- 
ous, more  moral  and  more  comfortable  had  they  never  seen  the  face 
of  a  man  professing  to  be  a  Christian." 

As  to  these  evils,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  Indians  were 
for  many  years  subjected  to  all  the  corrupting  influences  of  a  com- 
petition between  two  rival  companies,  who  prospered  by  their  de- 
basement, the  North  West  Co.  of  Montreal  and  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  Spirituous  liquors  were  introduced  as  early  as  the  first  settle- 
ments of  the  latter  company,  in  1670.  During  the  competition, 
"which  did  not  cease  until  the  year  1821,  it  was  the  interest  of  the 
rival  Europeans  to  gain  possession  of  the  Indians,  by  Avliatever 
means,  and  it  used  to  happen  that  whenever  an  Indian  canoe  was 
seen  approaching  on  the  lake  rival  boats  would  start  on  a  race  to 
reach  it  first,  and  scenes  of  bloodshed  were  the  consequence." 

To  the  same  tenor  is  what  Daniel  W.  Harmon  says  in  his  "Jour- 
nal of  Voyages  and  Travels  in  the  Interior  of  North  America,  etc.," 
after  19  years'  continuous  service  in  the  North  West  Co.  (1800- 
1819),  as  follows  (p.  314)  (in  an  account  of  the  Indians  generally 
on  the  east  side  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  in  British  America)  : 


294  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

"The  white  i)eoj)le  liave  been  among  these  above  mentioned  for 
about  ino  years.  .  .  ,  But  I  very  much  question  whether  they 
have  improved  in  their  character  or  condition  by  their  ac(iuaintance 
with  civilized  people.  In  their  savage  state  they  were  contented 
with  the  mere  necessaries  of  life,  which  they  could  procure  with  con- 
siderable ease ;  but  now  they  have  many  artificial  wants  created  by 
the  luxuries  which  we  (p.  315)  have  introduced  among  them,  and  as 
they  find  it  dillicult  to  obtain  these  luxuries,  they  have  become  to  a 
degree  discontented  with  their  condition  and  practice  fraud  in  their 
dealings.  A  half-civilized  Indian  is  more  savage  than  one  in  his 
original  state.  The  latter  has  some  sense  of  honor,  while  the  former 
has  none.  I  have  always  experienced  the  greatest  hospitality  and 
kindness  among  those  Indians  who  have  had  the  least  intercourse 
with  white  people.  They  readily  discover  and  adopt  our  evil  prac- 
tices; but  they  are  not  as  quick  to  discern  and  as  ready  to  follow 
the  few  good  examples  which  we  set  before  them." 

This  was  w^ritten  after  Harmon  had  retired  from  the  service  of 
the  North  West  Co.,  and  it  will  be  observed  that  he  does  not  charge 
this  condition  to  the  one  company  more  than  to  the  other. 

Turning  now^  to  the  Earl  of  Selkirk's  "Sketch  of  the  British  Fur 
Trade,"  in  which  he  is  seeking  to  make  a  case  against  the  "North 
Westers"  (pp.  38-9),  he  arraigns  them  for  "speculating  on  the  vices 
of  their  servants  by  encouraging  them  to  habits  of  drink  and  dissi- 
pation," and  (p.  51)  "It  is  an  indisputable  fact  that  the  native  In- 
dians have  been  growing  more  deficient  in  every  estimable  point  of 
character  from  the  time  that  Canada  fell  under  the  Protestant  Cov- 
ernment  of  Great  Britain.  The  cause  of  this  lamentable  and  humil- 
iating fact  can  no  longer  be  a  mystery,  when  it  is  known  that  the 
immediate  management  of  these  people  has  been  left  without  control 
in  the  hands  of  men  who  speculate  upon  the  vices  of  their  servants." 
On  p.  82,  desiring  to  make  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  (of  w^iich  he 
had  been  for  five  years  the  real  manager)  appear  to  have  been  as 
angelic  as  he  had  sought  to  make  the  "Norwesters"  satanic,  he 
wrote : 

"So  far  from  'sj)eculating  upon  their  vices,'  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  have  uniformly  expressed  the  strongest  desire  to  preserve  moral 
and  religious  habits  among  their  people,  nor  have  their  efforts  for 
this  ])urpose  been  without  effect." 

Though  His  Lordship  does  not  claim  that  great  things  had  actu- 
ally been  done  for  the  Indians  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  it  is  evi- 
dent from  his  contrasting  the  North  West  Co.'s  treatment  of  its  em- 
ployes with  that  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  ascribing  the  debase- 
ment of  the  Indians  to  the  "Norwesters,"  that  he  would  have  it  in- 
ferred that  the  Indians  who  had  been  only  under  the  influence  of 
the  Hudson's  Bav  Co.  were  in  vastly  better  condition  than  those  who 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  295 

had  been  contaminated  by  the  influence  of  their  rivals,  but,  unfortu- 
nately for  him,  not  only  have  we  the  before  quoted  extract  from  Har- 
mon's Journal,  but,  in  the  fragment  of  the  "Letter  Book  of  Miles  Mc- 
Donnell" (who,  as  Governor  of  the  Ked  Eiver  Colony,  led  out  the  first 
party  of  settlers  for  it  from  Scotland,  in  1811,  via  Hudson's  Bay, 
and  arrived  at  York  Factory,  the  chief  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  post  on 
the  Bay,  too  late  to  go  on  to  Red  River  till  the  spring  of  1812),  on 
pp.  217  and  218,  after  describing  the  lack  of  discipline  among  clerks 
and  other  white  employes  at  that  place,  he  continues  as  follows : 

"Mr.  Auld  and  Mr.  Cook  are  both  very  unpopular  amongst  the  In- 
dians here,  who  have  likewise  caught  the  spirit  of  dissatisfaction  to  a 
very  great  degree. 

"These  people,  who  in  1782  offered  to  defend  the  Factories  against 
the  French,  refuse  now  to  come  to  the  Goose  Hunt,  and  feel  indiffer- 
ent on  all  occasions  to  obey  the  orders  of  the  company's  officers. 
There  are  no  chiefs  among  them,  and  they  are  in  the  utmost  state  of 
individual  debasement  and  depravity  that  can  be  conceived.  It  is  a 
melancholy  reflection  that  during  their  long  intercourse  with  the 
whites  they  have  not  acquired  one  moral  virtue,  nor  is  the  faintest 
idea  of  the  true  Deity  to  be  found  among  them." 

It  must  be  remembered  that  for  more  than  a  century  these  In- 
dians and  their  ancestors  had  never  had  any  intercourse  with  any 
white  men  except  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  employes,  their  habitat 
being  hundreds  of  miles  northeast  of  any  line  of  travel  of  the  North 
West  Co.;  while  Miles  McDonnell's  position  as  the  first  Governor 
of  the  Red  River  Colony  is  assurance  that  he  would  not  exaggerate 
anything  to  the  injury  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 

To  His  Lordship's  charge  that  they  speculated  on  the  vices  of 
their  servants  and  carried  an  excessive  amount  of  intoxicating 
liquors  into  the  Indian  country,  the  "Norwesters"  retorted  as  fol- 
lows: "An  offer  made  by  Lord  Selkirk  in  the  year  1803  to  the  North 
West  Co.  to  furnish  them  with  spirits  for  their  Indian  trade  from 
distilleries  to  be  carried  on  at  his  settlement  at  Baldoon  in  Western 
Canada,  shows  that  he  held  a  different  doctrine  in  respect  to  supply- 
ing the  Indians  with  spirits  until  he  found  it  convenient  to  lavish 
his  abuse  on  the  North  West  Co."  (Cf.  Papers  Respecting  Red 
River  Settlement,  p.  135.) 

They  also  stated  that  "Great  improvements  had  taken  place  in 
this  (p.  10)  respect"  (/.  e.,  the  trade  in  liquors  by  the  North  West 
Co.)  "before  Lord  Selkirk's  interference,  which  it  is  essential  to 
state,  that  he  may  not  lay  claim  to  the  little  merit  the  reviled  fur 
traders  are  entitled  to  on  the  subject. 

"It  was  shown  that  the  quantity  of  spirituous  liquors  introduced 
into  the  Northwest  country  had  in  the  two  preceding  years  been  re- 


296  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

diiced  from  50,000  to  10,000  <;;ill(nis;  no  great  quantity,  considering 
there  were  at  that  time  2,()0{)  wliile  persons  in  their  eni])lovnieiit,  of 
which  tlie  <>reater  number  were  to  pass  tlie  winter  in  a  Siberian  cli- 
mate."    (Cf.  Narrative  of  Transactions,  etc.     Preface,  p.  0.) 

Keturniu}::  now  to  the  history  of  the  Ked  Kiver  Colony:  ''The 
first  emifirants  to  Ked  Kiver  were  about  t'wenty-flve  families,  Irish 
and  Scotch,  in  the  spring  of  1811.  They  reached  York  Fort  too  late 
to  go  on  to  Ked  River  in  ISll,  and  spent  the  winter  of  1811-12  at 
York  Fort  in  much  misery,  and  did  not  reach  Ked  Kiver  till  the 
autumn  of  1812." 

The  next  ])arty  of  settlers  arrived  early  in  the  winter  of  1812-13. 
During  the  first  winter  there  was  not  only  no  friction  between  the 
colonists  and  the  Norwesters  (one  of  whose  principal  forts  was  at 
the  forks  of  Ked  Kiver,  but  a  few  miles  from  the  colony),  but  it  is 
admitted  that  the  colonists  were  only  kept  from  great  suffering  if 
not  stai-\at ion  by  the  kindness  of  the  Norwesters  in  giving  them 
food. 

This  peaceful  condition  was  of  short  duration,  for  on  January 
8,  1814,  Miles  ^IcDonnell  issued  a  proclamation  forbidding  for 
twelve  months  the  exportation  of  any  provisions  ])rocured  or  raised 
within  the  territory,  "except  what  might  be  necessary  for  taking  to 
their  respective  destinations  the  parties  then  with  the  same." 

Soon  after  ''an  order  was  published  by  Miles  McDonnell  forbid- 
ding the  hunting  of  buffalo  on  horseback,  under  the  i)enalty  of  three 
months'  imiu-isonnient  for  the  first  offense,  and  forfeiture  of  the 
horse  with  a  similar  imprisonment  for  the  second."  (Cf.  Papers 
Respecting  Ked  Kiver  Settlement,  pp.  155-8. ) 

Tf  these  orders  could  be  enforced  they  would  have  starved  the 
North  ^^'est  Co.'s  trading  and  .exploring  parties,  for  the  Red  River 
A'alley  had  been  their  source  of  sui)i)ly  for  the  buffalo  meat  and  fat 
with  Avhich,  for  many  years  before  a  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  post  was 
established  anywhere  near  there,  they  and  their  predecessors  in  in- 
terest had  made  the  pemmican,  which  was  the  main  food  of  their 
parties  when  traveling  or  living  nt  times  and  in  regions  where  game 
and  fish  could  not  be  ol)tained. 

On  October  21,  ISU,  Miles  McDonnell  sent  the  following  letter 
to  Mr.  Duncan  Cameron,  acting  for  the  North  West  Co.  nt  the  forks 
of  the  Red  Kiver: 

''Take  notice,  thnt  by  the  authority  and  on  the  behalf  of  your 
landlord,  the  Right  Hon.  Thomas,  Earl  of  Selkirk,  I  do  hereby  Avarn 
you  and  all  your  nssociates  of  the  North  West  Co.  to  (]\ut  the  i)Ost 
and  pi-eniises  you  now  occupy  at  the  forks  of  the  Ked  Kiver  within 
six  calendar  months  from  the  date  hereof."  (Cf.  Papers  Respecting 
Ked  Kiver  Settlement,  p.  10.) 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  297 

Soon  after  his  proclamation  forbidding  tlie  export  of  any  provis- 
ions, Miles  McDonnell  attacked  a  fort  of  the  North  West  Co.,  and 
took  from  it  GOO  packages  of  85  pounds  each  of  pemmican,  and  took 
them  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  fort.  (Cf.  Narrative  of  Transac- 
tions, etc.,  p.  28.) 

Sir  Gordon  Drummon  was  then  Governor  General  of  Canada,  and 
a  dispatch  from  him  to  Earl  Bathurst  dated  ''Castle  Quebec,  August 
15,  1815,"  thus  gives  his  opinion  of  "Governor"  Miles  McDonnell : 
"The  plan  of  affording  military  protection  to  the  Earl  of  Selkirk's 
settlement  is  in  my  opinion  decidedly  impracticable,  on  account  of 
expense  of  transporting  and  supporting  the  troops  there,  and  the 
certain  consequence  of  involving  England  in  an  Indian  war  for  ob- 
jects foreign  to  the  interests  of  the  British  Government."  .  .  . 
"The  most  mischievous  consequences  are  likely  to  occur  from  the 
conduct  and  character  of  the  individual  whom  Lord  Selkirk  has  se- 
lected for  his  agent,  who  styles  himself  a  governor,  and  from  whose 
intercourse  with  the  persons  in  the  employ  of  the  North  West  Co. 
it  is  in  vain  to  look  for  the  spirit  of  moderation  and  conciliation 
which  is  so  desirable  should  animate  persons  situated  as  these 
traders  and  settlers  are,  cut  off  as  they  are  from  the  whole  civilized 
world  and  dependent  on  their  union  and  mutual  good  offices  for  pro- 
tection, not  only  from  the  savage  tribes  by  which  they  are  sur- 
rounded, but  against  an  enemy  not  less  formidable,  viz.,  famine." 
(Cf.  "Papers  Relating  to  the  Red  River  Settlement,"  pp.  4-5.) 

Idem  (p.  12)  "Inclosure  12"  is  a  copy  of  a  letter  from  Lieut. 
Col.  J.  Harvey,  Dept.  Adjt.  Gen.,  to  Messrs.  Maitland,  Gordon  and 
Auldjo  of  Montreal,  which  says:  "Sir  Gordon  Drummond  is  of 
opinion  that  if  the  lives  of  and  property  of  the  Earl  of  Selkirk's  set- 
tlers are  or  may  hereafter  be  endangered,  that  danger  will  arise 
principally  from  the  conduct  of  Mr.  Miles  McDonald,  His  Lordship's 
agent,  who  appears  to  His  Excellency  to  be  actuated  by  anything  but 
a  spirit  of  moderation  and  conciliation,  in  his  language  and  de- 
meanor, toward  the  servants  of  the  North  West  Co.  He  has,  more- 
over, assumed  powers  which  cannot  possibly,  in  His  Excellency's 
opinion,  have  been  vested  in  him,  or  any  agent,  private  or  public, 
of  any  individual  or  of  any  chartered  body." 

The  leaders  of  the  North  West  Co.  held  commissions  from  Canada 
as  magistrates  for  the  Indian  country,  and  they  now  proceeded  to 
try  what  virtue  resided  in  this  judicial  power,  and  from  their  head- 
quarters at  Fort  William  issued  a  warrant  for  the  arrest  of  Gov- 
ernor McDonnell,  to  which,  after  no  small  demurring,  he  reluctantly 
submitted,  and  "on  the  21st  of  June,  1815,  Miles  McDonnell  quitted 
the  Red  River,  having  surrendered  himself  a  prisoner,  under  the 
warrant  from  Fort  William,  a  few  days  before  to  Alex.  McKenzie,  a 
partner  and  one  of  the  agents  of  the  North  West  Co."     .     .     . 


298  ACQUI8ITI0X    OF    OREGON 

Their  Governor  gone,  the  discontent  which  had  been  steadily 
growing  in  tlie  minds  of  the  great  majority  of  the  colonists  burst 
forth,  and  they  resolved  to  quit  the  colony,  and  accordingly,  ''On 
the  27th  of  June,  1815,*  the  colony  was  finally  broken  up,  and  the 
remaining  settlers  and  servants  embarked  for  Jack  River."  (Cf. 
Papers,  etc.,  p.  171.) 

About  50  families,  in  all  140  persons,  "threw  themselves  upon 
the  compassion  of  the  North  West  Co.  for  passage  away  from  the 
scene  of  their  misery  and  were  conveyed  in  their  canoes  to  York 
(now  Toronto),  rjtper  Canada,  while  some  13  or  14:  families,  con- 
sisting of  about  40  persons,  started  for  Jack  Kiver  on  their  way  to 
Hudson's  Bay."  (Cf.  Narrative. of  Trans.,  etc.,  p.  39;  also  Tapers 
Relating  to  the  Red  River  Settlement,  p.  24.) 

Immediately  on  the  arrival  of  these  people  in  York,  Rev.  John 
Strachan  wrote  and  published  his  "Letter  to  the  Right  Honorable 
the  Earl  of  Selkirk,"  its  preface  being  dated  "York,  U.  C,  Oct.  15, 
1816." 

Dr.  Strachan  was  probably  the  most  brilliantly  gifted  and  the 
most  useful  Episcopal  clergyman  of  his  generation  in  Canada,  and 
was  Bishop  of  Toronto  from  1839  to  his  death  in  1867,  in  his  eighty- 
second  year.  While  somewhat  narrow  in  his  views,  especially  in  re- 
gard to  the  rights  of  other  churches  than  his  own,  he  always  had  the 
full  courage  of  his  convictions,  and  was  always  absolutely  fearless 
in  expressing  and  contending  for  what  he  believed  to  be  right  on  any 
subject. 

He  was  also  as  intense  a  Tory,  and  as  anxious  to  prevent  any  one 
born  subject  to  "His  Gracious  Majesty,"  George  the  Third,  from 
bettering  his  condition  by  migrating  to  the  United  States,  as  was  the 
Earl  of  Selkirk,  as  witness  the  following  passages  from  his  "Letter 
to  the  Earl  of  Selkirk  (pp.  20-21)  :  "But  to  turn  the  stream  of  emi- 
gration from  the  United  States  to  the  British  Colonies  is  confessedly 
an  object  of  the  greatest  importance.  .  .  Tt  appears  that  the 
Ministry  begins  to  be  sensible  of  its  importance,  and  it  is  to  be 
hoped  that  a  total  exclusion  of  American  settlers  will  form  part  of 
their  plan ;  for  unless  this  policy  be  adopted  and  rigidly  adhered  to, 
this  valuable  colony  (/.  c.  Canada)  cannot  be  long  preserved  to  the 
British  Crown  (]».  21). 

"You  are  too  well  accpiainted  with  the  dei)ravity  of  the  American 
character  to  desire  any  number  of  that  peoi)le  in  your  settlement.  I 
am,  nevertheless,  persuaded  that  so  far  from  raising  a  colony  of 
British  subjects,  whose  principles  and  morals  shall  be  free  from  the 
contamination  of  the  T'nited  States,  etc." 

In  extenuation  of  this  bitterness  it  should  be  remembered  that 
York  had  been  captured  by  the  army  of  the  United  States  in  1813. 


AGQUISITIOX    OF    OREGON  299 

The  ''Advertisement"  or  preface  of  his  little  book  is  as  follows: 
*Ms  soon  as  I  heard  that  the  Earl  of  Selkirk  was  commencing  a 
settlement  on  Red  River,  I  determined  to  warn  the  public  of  the  de- 
ception, and  of  the  great  misery  which  emigrants  must  experience  in 
such  a  distant  and  inhospitable  region.  But  it  was  difficult  to  pro- 
cure the  necessary  information,  and  before  it  could  be  obtained  the 
progress  of  the  American  war  called  my  attention  to  distress  nearer 
home.  It  was  not  till  last  June  that  I  was  able  to  get  a  copy  of  His 
Lordship's  Prospectus,  a  paper  neatly  drawn  up,  but,  alas !  destitute 
of  truth.  To  those  who  are  amazed,  after  reading  my  remarks,  at 
the  promises  and  assertions  which  it  contains,  I  am  justified  in  say- 
ing that  promises  still  more  remarkable,  and  assertions  still  more 
extravagant,  were  made  by  the  Earl  of  Selkirk  himself,  at  Stromness, 
in  June,  1813,  to  persons  whom  he  was  enticing  to  go  out.  Few  of 
these  wretched  men  have  any  written  agreement;  an  omission,  I 
hope,  not  wilfully  made  to  prevent  legal  redress ;  for  surely  punish- 
ment ought  to  be  inflicted  on  speculators  who  persuade  families 
under  false  pretenses  to  leave  their  native  homes. 

''Of  the  settlers  who  went  to  the  Red  River  many  died  at 
Churchill  in  Hudson's  Bay  from  the  severity  of  the  climate  and  the 
quality  of  their  food.  Others  seriously  injured  their  health,  and 
not  one  of  those  who  have  escaped  saw  a  joyful  day  from  the  time 
they  left  Scotland  till  they  began  their  journey  to  Canada.  The 
following  letter  may  prevent  any  more  from  encountering  the  mis- 
eries of  the  polar  regions;  and  this  is  all  I  am  able  to  effect.  But 
retributive  justice  is  due ;  and  I  flatter  myself  that  among  the  many 
great  examples  of  disinterested  benevolence  so  common  in  Great 
Britain,  one  may  be  found  sufficiently  powerful  to  compel  Lord  Sel- 
kirk and  his  brother  proprietors  to  make  ample  compensation  to  the 
survivors  for  the  money  and  effects  lost  at  Churchill  and  the  mis- 
eries they  have  endured." 

The  following  extracts  will  show  how  thoroughly  selfish  and  des- 
titute of  any  vestige  of  philanthropy  were  all  of  Selkirk's  coloniza- 
tion schemes. 

(P.  6)  Writing  of  Selkirk's  Prince  Edward's  Island  colony  he 
says :  "The  quantity  of  land  assigned  to  each  family,  of  50  or  even 
100  acres,  was  too  small.  In  a  very  few  years  the  farmer,  if  in- 
dustrious, must  have  sold  out  or  purchased  the  adjacent  lands  at 
their  own  price.  Had  farms,  even  large  farms,  been  given  to  the 
first  settlers  for  nothing,  and  the  means  of  cultivation  for  the  first 
year,  the  advantage  would  have  been  yours. 

"It  is  the  settlers  that  give  value  to  the  surrounding  soil.  Noth- 
ing is  more  common  in  the  United  States  than  for  the  proprietors 
of  large  tracts  to  give  extensive  farms  gratis  to  the  few  that  first 


300  ACQihSlTIOX    OF    ORFAJOX 

encounlei-  the  (lifllciilty  of  settlinj;;.  Your  people  could  not  sit  down 
with  satisfaction  on  ;i  purchase  of  50  acres  when  the}"  saw  (p.  7) 
their  neighbors  getting  200  from  the  Government  for  nothing. 

(P.  D)  "For  every  settler  brought  into  Upper  Canada  by  Your 
Lordship  \o\\  received  200  acres  of  land,  of  which  you  were  bound 
to  grant  him  50,  nmking  a  net  profit  of  150  acres  on  each  settler. 
This  portion  of  50  acres  being  too  small  for  a  farm,  must  in  a  few 
years  be  sold  for  a  trifle,  or  the  pioneer  be  compelled  to  purchase 
at  any  price  as  soon  as  he  was  able  (if  that  could  ever  hapi)en  on 
so  small  a  farm)  the  adjoining  lands.  This  is  a  way  of  ac(;umulat- 
ing  proi)erty  not  the  most  honorable  to  the  peerage  and  attended 
with  the  most  pernicious  consequences  to  the  colony  and  its  admin- 
istration. Such  settlers  consider  themselves  dupes,  they  become 
discontented  with  their  situation  aTid  with  the  Government  which 
permits  such  transactions. 

"And  it  must  be  allowed  that  it  would  be  much  better  for  the 
King  to  grant  at  once  any  quantity  of  land  that  he  chooses  to  a 
person  whom  he  wished  to  serve  than  to  give  it  in  this  manner.  I 
am  ready  to  acquit  Y'our  Lordship  of  any  profit,  as  yet,  in  either  of 
these  sj)eculations;  gras])ing  at  too  much,  nothing  has  been  obtained, 
and  though  marked  with  more  than  the  i)recaution  of  an  American 
land  jobber,  they  have  been  singularly  unsuccessful. 

"Taking  these  things  into  consideration,  I  was  disposed  to  pass 
over  in  silence  Your  Lordship's  land  speculations  in  Prince  Ed- 
ward's Island  and  in  T"i)per  Canada.  Y^on  might  have  been  deceived 
and  really  sujjposed  that  the  conditions  offered  on  both  occasions 
were  extremely  liberal,  but  after  the  experience  which  they  must 
have  given  you,  and  your  visit  to  America,  it  will  not  be  so  easy  to 
excuse  you  for  offoi-ing  worse  conditions  to  emigrants,  going  to  an 
infinitely  worse  situation,  where  they  can  only  meet  with  disap- 
pointment and  misery. 

"Your  i)rojected  settlement  at  the  Red  River,  or  third  attempt  at 
colonization,  appears  to  me  not  only  more  extravagant  than  either 
of  the  former,  but  one  of  the  most  gross  imi)Ositions  that  ever  was 
attempted  on  the  British  ]>ublic  and  must  be  attended  with  the  most 
baneful  consequences  to  all  those  unfortunate  men  who.  deluded  by 
the  false  promises  held  out  to  them,  shall  leave  their  homes  for  such 
a  dreary  wilderness.'' 

(P.  12)  "The  proprietors  may  be  ignorant,  but  you  know,  my 
Lord,  that  situatioti  is  the  true  criterion  of  the  value  of  lands  and 
1lie  ])iinci])al  cause  of  i^etarding  or  accelerating  their  softloment." 
.  .  .  "In  this  portion  of  the  Prospectus"  (/.  p.,  Selkirk's  Pros- 
pectus, which  Strachan  quotes  in  full  on  [)]).  00,  7(5,  and  which  is  an 
exam]tle  of  as  conscienceless  ingenuity  in  misreitresentation  of  the 
desirability  of  the  Red  River  Valley  as  a  place  to  which  to  migrate 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  301 

from  Great  Britain  as  was  ever  printed  by  tlie  most  rascall}^  land 
speculator  on  earth. — W.  I.  M.)  I  particularly  call  the  reader's  at- 
tention to  the  very  slight  manner  of  noticing  the  remoteness  of  the 
projected  colony.  A  stranger  would  naturally  suppose  that,  as  Up- 
per Canada  is  carefully  omitted  in  comparing  the  lands  of  the  Red 
River  with  the  other  colonies,  they  formed  i)art  of  that  extensive 
province,  more  especially  since  they  are  declared  to  be  equal  in  soil 
and  climate  to  any  in  British  America.  As  respects  the  value  of 
land,  situation  is  everything.  The  most  fruitful  valley  in  the  world 
is  worth  nothing  if  surrounded  with  impassable  mountains.  The 
assertion,  therefore,  that  these  lands  are  in  no  ways  different  in  ad- 
vantages from  those  of  Lower  Canada  and  Nova  Scotia  is  false,  un- 
less their  situation  be  equally  favorable." 

(P.  16)  Speaking  of  the  title  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  the 
fee  simple  of  all  the  land  draining  into  Hudson's  Bay,  he  says:  ''As 
to  the  opinion  of  lawyers  of  the  first  eminence  declaring  the  title  un- 
exceptionable, it  is  here,  as  on  many  other  occasions,  of  little  weight, 
since  other  gentlemen  of  the  first  legal  character  in  England  have 
pronounced  the  charter  illegal  and  void.  The  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
thought  this  latter  the  more  correct  opinion,  for,  in  1802,  when  their 
commerce  was  infringed  upon  by  rival  traders,  they  very  wisely  de- 
clined bringing  the  question  to  a  decision  in  a  court  of  justice." 

(P.  27)  Commenting  on  the  statement  in  the  prospectus  that  the 
expense  of  bringing  out  emigrants  will  average  £10  for  each  family, 
he  says  in  a  footnote :  ''It  appears  that  instead  of  £10  for  each  fam- 
ily, 10  guineas  are  paid  for  man,  woman  and  child,  which  makes  an 
immense  difference  to  the  settler — see  the  postscript."  Turning  to 
the  postscript,  02-68,  w^e  find  statements  of  Alexander  Matheson, 
John  Macpherson,  Andrew  Macbeath  and  William  Gunn,  who  had 
been  brought  from  the  Red  River  Settlement  in  the  North  West 
Co.'s  boats,  and  also  a  copy  of  Alexander  Matheson's  agreement  with 
Lord  Selkirk,  which  fully  justify  all  the  severe  things  Strachan  has 
written. 

(P.  28)  "To  charge  £50  for  every  100  acres,  in  a  place  so  remote, 
is  to  pillage  the  unfortunate  emigrant ;  for  if  he  had  found  his  way 
to  Canada  he  would  have  received  200  acres  for  nothing,  or,  at  most, 
£9,  the  price  of  survey;  and  instead  of  being  cut  off  from  all  the 
world,  he  could  have  been  in  a  good  neighborhood,  and  near  a  good 
market  for  his  produce.  In  this  province  farms  are  frequently  pur- 
chased, with  improvements,  for  |2  per  acre;  that  is,  from  10  to  20 
acres  clear,  with  a  small  log  house.  In  the  midst  of  the  rich  settle- 
ments, and  in  favorable  situations,  the  price  is  greater,  sometimes 
f  10  per  acre ;  but  the  average  price  of  land  through  the  whole  prov- 
ince does  not  exceed  |1." 


:502  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGOX 

Pages  30  to  46  he  gives  tables  showing  the  distances,  ''first,  from 
Bed  River  Settlement  to  Hudson's  Bay,  710  miles,  with  25  portages 
and  many  other  impediments." 

"Second,  lioiii  Fort  William  on  Lake  Superior,  about  1,300  miles 
from  Montreal  or  2,000  from  the  sea  to  Your  Lordship's  colony  on 
the  Red  River,  (144  miles,  with  about  40  ])orta<»os ;  and  third,  from 
Red  River  to  the  Falls  of  St.  Anthony,  about  7(54  miles,  with  two 
portages." 

I  have  coi)ied  thus  at  length  from  Dr.  Strachan's  letter  because 
nowhere  else  can  so  clear  and  convincing  a  statement  be  found  of 
the  heartless  selfishness  of  the  Earl  of  Selkirk's  various  coloniza- 
tion schemes,  for  whicli  he  has  received  from  some  eulogists  of  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  the  i'e])utation  of  a  philanthropist,  lliough  all  of 
these  eulogists  carefully  refrain  from  stating  any  details  of  Selkirk's 
schemes,  or  from  intimating  the  real  purpose  of  his  founding  the 
Red  River  colony. 

]Mr.  Colin  Robertson — an  old  Norwester  who  had  gone  over  to  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co. — was  on  his  way  to  the  colony  from  -Montreal 
with  a  party  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  emy)loyes,  and  at  the  Lake  of 
the  Woods  heard  of  the  destruction  of  the  colony,  and  Ihat  those 
who  had  not  gone  in  the  North  West  Co.'s  boats  to  Canada  had  gone 
to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  post  at  Jack  River,  near  the  outlet  of  Lake 
Winnipeg.  He  therefore  hastened  thither,  and  ])ut  himself  at  their 
head,  and  ''on  the  lOth  of  August,  1815,  Colin  Robertson  arrived  in 
Red  River,  accompanied  by  the  colonists,  who  had  been  driven  off, 
together  with  about  20  clerks  and  servants."  (Cf.  Papers,  etc.,  p. 
174;  also  the  beginning  of  Pambrun's  Narrative.) 

"On  the  3d  of  November,  1815,  Mr.  Robert  Semple  arrived  in  Red 
River  as  Governor  in  Chief  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Territories,  accom- 
panied by  a  Mr.  Alexander  IMcDonnell,  sheriff  to  the  settlement,  in 
charge  of  about  IGO  ])ersons,  a  few  of  them  servants,  but  the  greater 
part  settlers  with  their  families  from  Scotland,  and  by  Mr.  James 
Sutherland,  in  charge  of  supplies  for  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  trad- 
ing posts." 

Connected  with  this  first  destruction  and  re-establishment  of  the 
Red  River  Settlement  two  winter  journeys  were  made,  one  east  by 
Lagomoniere,  the  other  west  by  John  Pritchard,  which  are  thus 
related. 

"These  letters"  (?'.  e.,  from  Lord  Selkirk  to  the  colonists  an- 
nouncing his  intention  in  the  spring  of  1810  to  join  them  as  soon 
as  j)ossible),  "were  entrusted  to  a  person  named  Lagomoniere,  whom 
Lord  Selkirk  could  depend  upon,  and  who  had  made  a  hazardous 
winter  journey,  on  foot,  of  upward  of  2,000  miles  for  the  purpose  of 
bringing  intelligence  to  Montreal  from  the  Red  River  of  the  re-estab- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  303 

lishment  of  the  colony."     (Cf.  "Statement  Eespecting  the  Earl  of 
Selkirk's  Settlement,"  etc.,  p.  41.) 

Pritchard  had  been  with  the  North  West  Co.  from  1801  to  1814, 
when  he  decided  to  settle  in  the  Red  River  Colony. 

On  p.  11  of  his  "Narrative"  he  says  that  in  the  autumn  of  1814 
the  Northwesters  in  Montreal  had  told  him  that  the  Red  River  Col- 
ony would  be  broken  up,  and  continues :  "In  the  hope  of  preventing 
the  evil  by  warning  Governor  McDonnell  of  the  danger  which  men- 
aced the  settlement,  I  undertook  a  journey  to  Red  River  by  the  cir- 
cuitous route  of  Hudson's  Bay,  a  distance  of  near  4,000  miles,  the 
greatest  part  of  which  I  performed  on  snowshoes,  hauling  after  me 
upon  a  sledge  provisions  and  every  other  requisite  to  serve  me  for 
20  or  30  days  at  a  time. 

"I  set  out  from  Montreal  on  the  28th  of  October,  1814,  and  ar- 
rived at  Red  River  on  the  15th  of  April  ensuing,  when  I  had  the 
mortification  to  find  that  the  prediction  of  McKenzie  was  in  part 
accomplished." 

Either  of  these  journeys — on  foot  and  alone — was  a  very  much 
more  remarkable  performance  than  Whitman's  journey — not  on  foot 
and  alone,  but  with  saddle  and  pack  animals  and  one  companion, 
Lovejoy — all  the  way  to  Fort  Bent,  besides  a  guide  from  Fort  Hall 
to  the  Missouri  frontier,  and  the  company  of  a  small  party  of  fur 
traders,  the  last  550  miles  of  the  way  from  Bent's  Fort  to  the  Mis- 
souri frontier. 

In  the  late  winter  of  1815-lG  Selkirk  reached  Montreal  via  New 
York  from  England,  and  renewed  the  efforts  previously  made  to  se- 
cure from  Sir  Gordon  Drummond  a  garrison  of  regular  British  sol- 
diers to  be  stationed  at  Red  River,  but  failing  for  the  reasons  set 
forth  in  Drummond's  dispatch  of  August  18,  1815,  Selkirk,  like  a 
feudal  lord  of  the  Middle  Ages,  proceeded  to  raise  a  small  army  of 
his  own  by  enlisting  something  more  than  a  hundred  of  the  dis- 
charged soldiers  of  two  regiments  of  the  German  mercenaries  that 
England  had  hired  to  fight  against  the  United  States  (and  who  had 
been  discharged  in  Canada  on  the  conclusion  of  peace),  and  having 
by  some  means  obtained  a  bodyguard  for  himself  from  the  Thirty- 
seventh  Regiment  and  a  commission  as  "Magistrate  in  the  Indian 
country"  under  the  Canada  Judicature  Act,  he  marshaled  his  forces 
in  full  uniform,  and  with  colors  flying  and  drums  beating  set  out 
from  Lachine,  near  Montreal,  in  the  beginning  of  June,  1816,  for 
Fort  William  and  the  Red  River. 

Meanwhile  events  were  moving  rapidly  toward  the  bloody  trag- 
edy of  the  second  destruction  of  the  ill-fated  colony. 

In  October,  1815,  Colin  Robertson  surprised  and  captured  Fort 
Gibraltar,  the  North  West  Co.'s  post  at  the  confluence  of  the  Red 


ao4  ACQrrsrTTOx  of  oufaiox 

and  Asshiiho'mc  without  bloodshed,  but  contented  himself  with 
taking  two  cannon  and  30  stand  of  arms  that  had  been  taken  from 
the  settlement  the  preceding  year.  (Cf.  "The  Great  Company,"  p. 
408.)  >\hetlier  or  not  (lovernor  Semple  approved  of  this  act  does 
not  appear. 

In  March  Semple  went  west  to  inspect  certain  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.'s  forts,  and  in  his  absence,  on  tlie  17th  of  March,  ISIO,  the  North 
West  Co.'s  ])ost  at  the  forks  of  the  Red  Kiver  was  again  forcibly 
seized  by  Colin  Kobertson  at  the  head  of  an  armed  party. 

Robertson  and  his  jiarty  having  on  the  19th  of  March,  1816, 
seized  the  North  West  express,  and  having  opened  the  letters  therein 
addressed  to  Duncan  Cameron  and  S.  Lamar  of  the  North  West  Co., 
and  seized  the  i)apers  found  in  Cameron's  desk  and  on  his  table^ 
Robeitson  declared  that  he  had  succeeded  beyond  his  expectations, 
as  well  in  getting  possession  of  the  fort  without  bloodshed  as  in  hav- 
ing found  papei's  therein  which  would  justify  all  he  had  done;  and 
after  the  capture  of  the  express  he  further  said  that  he  was  now  in 
l)Ossessiou  of  such  documents  and  so  completely  master  of  the  se- 
crets of  the  North  West  Co.  that  he  should  be  able  to  bring  them  to 
what  terms  he  pleased  in  the  coalition  Avhich  must  take  place  to  pre- 
vent the  ruin  of  both  companies;  and  lastly,  that  he  declared  he 
would  fortify  the  ])ost  and  sink  all  the  boats  and  pemmican  that 
Alex  ^McDonnell  of  the  North  West  Co.  might  bring  down,  should 
he  venture  to  make  the  trial.  (Cf.  Papers  Relating  to  the  Red 
River  Settlement,  etc.,  pp.  170- 7.) 

Robei-tson  destroyed  Fort  Cibraltar  and  took  Chief  Factor  Dun- 
can Cameron  i)risouer  and  sent  him  via  Hudson's  Bay  to  England, 
where  he  was  at  once  discharged  without  trial.  (Cf.  ''The  Great 
Company,"  p.  409.) 

''On  the  19th  of  June,  ISKi,  the  unfortunate  atfray  took  place  in 
which  Governor  Semple  and  about  20  of  his  officers  and  men  lost 
their  lives. 

"The  numbers  killed  and  wounded  on  each  side  appear  to  have 
been  one  killed  and  one  wounded  on  the  part  of  the  half-breeds,  and 
one  wounded  and  20  or  21  killed  on  that  of  the  colonists.  .  .  The 
time  occujjied  by  the  whole  alTair  .  .  .  did  not  exceed  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  ...  if  the  fact  that  the  colonists  were  the  assail- 
ants (of  \\hicli  [  ai)i)rehend  there  can  be  little  doubt)  be  admitted. 

"On  the  22d  of  June,  1810,  the  colony  was  a  second  time  broken 
up  and  the  settlers  proceeded  on  the  afternoon  of  that  day  from  Fort 
Douglas  to  Lake  Winnipic."  (Cf.  Papers  Relating  to  the  Red  River 
Settlement,  pp.  185,  192,  194.) 

Some  of  the  leading  colonists  were  carried  to  Fort  William  as 
prisoners. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  305 

Meanwhile  Selkirk  and  his  private  army  were  hastening  toward 
Eed  River,  and  at  Sault  Ste.  Marie  received  news  of  the  battle  be- 
tween the  half-breeds  and  Governor  Semple's  party  and  the  second 
destruction  of  the  colony. 

Pushing  on  as  rapidly  as  possible,  he  camped  his  army  opposite 
Fort  William,  late  in  August,  1816,  and  issuing  warrants  proceeded 
to  arrest  all  of  the  partners  of  the  North  West  Co.,  who  were  then 
gathered  there  for  the  annual  meeting,  and  sent  them  prisoners  to 
Montreal,  accused  of  high  treason,  murder,  robbery  and  conspiracy, 
and  then  proceeded  to  occupy  Fort  William  till  May,  1817,  and  to 
do  as  he  pleased  with  all  the  correspondence  and  records  and  prop- 
erty of  the  North  West  Co.  there,  and  sent  out  expeditions  and  cap- 
tured three  other  of  the  North  West  Co.'s  forts. 

No  sooner  did  the  Norwesters  reach  Montreal  than  they  were  all 
released  on  bail  and  warrants  were  at  once  sworn  out  for  the  arrest 
of  the  Earl,  but  when  an  officer  reached  Fort  William  with  them 
the  doughty  nobleman,  instead  of  submitting  to  the  law  as  the  "Nor- 
westers" had  done,  made  the  officer  a  prisoner,  and  after  a  few  days' 
confinement  released  him  and  ordered  him  to  go  back  whence  he 
came. 

The  Canadian  Government  at  once  (in  October,  1816)  revoked 
Selkirk's  commission  as  justice  of  the  peace,  likewise  all  other  com- 
missions held  in  the  Indian  country  by  ''Norwesters"  or  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.  officers,  and  appointed  Colonel  W.  B.  Coltman  and  Major 
John  Fletcher  as  special  commissioners  to  proceed  to  the  scene  of 
the  disturbance  in  the  Indian  country  and  investigate  and  report 
upon  the  nature,  extent  and  causes  of  the  difficulties  between  the 
North  West  Co.  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  and  their  report  covers 
pp.  152-250  of  the  "Papers  Respecting  the  Red  River  Settlement," 
and,  while  evidently  fair,  is  very  distinctly  more  favorable  to  the 
North  West  Co.  than  to  Selkirk  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  The 
commissioners  left  Quebec  October  31,  1816,  and  Montreal  Novem- 
ber 7,  1816,  but  were  unable  to  reach  Fort  William,  and  accordingly 
returned  to  York  and  waited  for  spring. 

Meanwhile  these  tales  of  wholesale  murder  and  robbery  and  op- 
pression had  reached  London,  and  so  scandalized  all  England  that 
in  February,  1817,  while  Selkirk  was  still  carrying  things  with  a 
high  hand  at  Fort  William  and  capturing  North  West  Co.'s  forts 
whenever  possible,  the  Governor  General  of  Canada  received  from 
the  home  Government  a  dispatch  which  contained  the  following 
passage : 

"You  will  also  require,  under  similar  penalties,  a  restitution  of 
all  forts,  buildings  and  trading  stations,  with  the  property  which 
they  contain,  which  may  have  been  seized  or  taken  possession  of  by 
either  party,  to  the  party  who  originally  established  or  constructed 


306  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

the  same,  and  who  were  in  possession  of  them  previous  to  the  recent 

disputes  between  the  two  companies.  Yon  will  also  recpiii-e  the  re- 
moval of  any  blockade  or  imjiediment  by  which  any  party  may  have 
attempted  to  prevent  the  free  passage  of  traders  or  other  of  His 
Majesty's  subjects,  or  the  natives  of  the  country,  with  their  merchan- 
dise, furs,  provisions  or  other  etfects,  throughout  the  lakes,  rivers, 
roads  and  every  other  usual  route  of  communication  heretofore  used 
for  the  purpose  of  the  fur  trade  in  the  interior  of  North  America, 
and  the  full  and  free  permission  of  all  persons  to  pursue  their  usual 
and  accustomed  trade  without  hindrance  or  molestation.  The  mu- 
tual restoration  of  all  property  ca})tured  during  these  disputes  and 
the  freedom  of  trade  and  intercourse  with  the  Indians,  until  the 
trials  now  pending  can  be  brought  to  a  judicial  decision,  and  the 
great  question  at  issue  with  respect  to  the  rights  of  the  companies, 
shall  be  definitely  settled."     (Cf.  ''The  Great  Company,"  p.  423.) 

This  was  followed,  May  3,  1817,  by  a  public  proclamation  by  the 
Prince  Regent  ordering  all  officers  and  servants  of  the  Iludson's 
Bay  Co.  and  the  North  West  Co.  to  refrain  from  in  any  way  molest- 
ing each  other  or  interfering  with  one  another's  trade,  and  ordering 
restitution  of  all  places  captured  by  either  party  from  the  other. 
(Cf.  Report  of  the  Proceedings,  etc.,  at  the  Assizes  held  at  York, 
App.  2,  pp.  4145.) 

Armed  with  this  authority  the  Sheriff  of  Upper  Canada  arrived 
at  Fort  William  vei-y  soon  after  Selkirk  had  left,  dispossessing  those 
he  had  left  in  charge,  and  restored  it  to  its  owners,  and  it  was  hoped 
that  peace  would  be  speedily  restored  throughout  the  Indian  coun- 
try, at  least  as  far  as  white  men  were  concerned. 

But  this  hope  proved  vain,  as  Williams,  Semple's  successor  in 
the  Governorship,  continued  to  harass  the  "Norwesters"  with  the 
aid  of  Selkirk's  mercenaries,  so  that  "There  were  numerous  ex- 
ami)les  of  the  abuse  of  force  and  the  utter  abandonment  to  lawless- 
ness during  this  and  the  following  year."  (Cf.  "The  Great  Com- 
pany," p.  427.) 

This  was  the  natural  result  of  the  long  delay  in  trying  the  pris- 
oners sent  from  Fort  William  to  Montreal  by  Selkirk  in  August, 
1816.  Naturally  His  Lordship  sought  to  have  them  all  transported 
across  seas  and  tried  in  England,  and  an  order  was  actually  issued 
by  the  Home  Government  for  that  to  be  done,  but  on  vigorous  re- 
monstrance from  Canada  it  was  countermanded. 

At  length,  when  Selkirk's  utmost  ingenuity  could  no  longer  post- 
pone the  trial,  it  took  place  in  October,  1818,  at  York  (now  Toronto), 
Upper  Canada. 

The  only  full  report  of  it  is  contained  in  "The  Report  of  Proceed- 
ings, etc.,  at  the  Assizes  in  York,"  which  was  published  by  the  North 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  307 

West  Co.,  with  a  brief  advertisement  and  preface.     The  advertise- 
ment is  as  follows: 

"In  reprinting  this  report  of  the  recent  proceedings  in  Upper 
Canada,  connected  with  the  disputes  between  the  Earl  of  Selkirk 
and  the  North  West  Co.,  the  agents  of  the  company  have  to  state 
that  the  minntes  of  these  proceedings  were  taken  by  a  sworn  short- 
hand writer  employed  nnder  the  sanction  of  the  Court,  and  on  con- 
dition of  furnishing  the  Court  with  a  copy  of  his  minutes  in  the 
event  of  any  conviction  taking  place. 

"The  report  and  the  appendix,  therefore,  are  to  be  considered  as 
documents  strictly  official,  and  the  preface  and  notes,  reprinted  from 
the  Montreal  edition,  are  the  only  comments  offered  by  the  North 
West  Co.  in  answer  to  the  numerous  calumnies  with  which  they  have 
been  assailed  through  the  medium  of  the  press,  as  well  as  by  ex  parte 
statements  in  the  House  of  Commons.  When  the  papers  laid  on  the 
table  of  that  honorable  house  are  printed  for  the  use  of  the  members 
of  the  Legislature,  it  will  be  seen  how  far  these  calumnies  are  sup- 
ported by  the  documents  bearing  upon  the  case ;  and  when  the  agents 
of  the  North  West  Co.  shall  be  acquainted  with  the  nature  of  these 
documents,  if  it  shall  appear  that  the  conduct  of  those  with  whom 
they  are  connected  requires  further  explanation,  they  will  take  an 
early  opportunity  to  offer  the  same.  In  the  meantime  they  entreat 
the  attention  of  the  public  to  the  reports  of  the  trials  which  have 
taken  place,  and  they  request  that  the  cases  made  out  in  evidence  be- 
fore juries  may  be  compared  with  the  aggravated  statements  and 
ex  parte  affidavits  previously  published  and  industriously  circulated 
by  the  Earl  of  Selkirk  and  his  agents. 

"They  also  request  those  who  may  take  any  interest  in  the  ques- 
tion to  compare  the  recently  published  narrative  of  Mr.  Pritchard, 
the  late  petitioner  to  the  House  of  Commons,  and  his  associates,  Mr. 
Pambrun  and  Mr,  Heurter,  with  the  evidence  of  the  same  persons 
subjected  to  cross-examination  in  an  open  court,  and  contrasted  with 
the  testimony  of  the  witnesses  for  the  defense. 

"It  appears  that  the  result  of  this  comparison,  on  the  trials,  in- 
duced the  juries  to  reject  the  evidence  of  these  persons  as  unworthy 
of  belief ;  and  considering  the  circumstances  under  which  their  nar- 
ratives are  now  produced,  and  pending  the  legal  investigations  which 
are  still  at  issue,  as  well  as  the  parliamentary  proceedings  which 
have  been  instituted,  it  is  submitted  that  no  impartial  person  can 
give  credit  to  ex  parte  statements  resting  on  such  suspicious  au- 
thority, and  manifestly  published  with  a  view  to  prejudge  a  question 
depending  on  official  documents  and  legal  decisions." 

The  preface  says :  "The  arrest  by  the  Earl  of  Selkirk  of  several 
partners  and  people  in  the  employ  of  the  North  West  Co.  at  Fort 


308  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

^^■illi;llll  ill  Au^iust,  ISKi.  oil  cliai'^es  of  liigh  treason,  murder,  rob- 
beiy  and  conspirai-y  is  well  known  to  tlic  i)nblic,  and  the  trials  at 
York,  in  Upper  Canada  .  .  .  deinonsira lively  exhibit  the  utter 
futility  of  those  charj;es;  and  the  long  period  that  has  elapsed  be- 
tween the  time  they  were  bron<»ht  and  that  wlien  the  trials  upon 
them  have  taken  jtlace  is  an  additional  proof,  if  any  were  wanting, 
of  the  ojipressions  under  colour  ol'  law  to  which  Lord  Selkirk  has 
subjected  the  North  West  Co." 

The  preface  goes  on  to  declare  that  the  del'eiulants  had  tried  in 
vain  to  obtain  a  more  si)eedy  trial,  which  had  been  postponed  be- 
cause of  the  claim  constantly  made  by  the  prosecution  that  the  Earl 
of  Selkirk  had  the  evidence  and  was  not  within  reach  of  the  court, 
and  declares  that  "The  Earl  of  Selkirk  was  only  dragged  into  the 
arena  as  the  'private  prosecutor'  by  the  determination  of  the  Gov- 
ernor (leneral  of  Canada  to  order  the  liberation  of  the  prisoners  if 
they  were  not  speedily  brought  to  trial,"  and  continues,  "Instead, 
however,  of  nuiking  his  appearance  as  the  private  prosecutor  in 
these  causes  at  York,  where  he  was  anxiously  expected  uj)  to  the 
very  hour  of  the  commencement  of  Browai  and  Boucher's  trial. 
His  Lordship  disappointed  the  Crown  officers,  his  own  witnesses 
ajid  the  ])ublic,  and  although  he  started  from  Montreal  in  the  direc- 
tion of  Tapper  Canada,  he  soon  after  turned  otf  to  the  left  and  pro- 
ceeded by  way  of  New  Y'ork  to  England,  anticipating,  no  doubt,  this 
signal  defeat  and  unable  to  withstand  the  mortification  of  witness- 
ing it  in  person." 

Indictments  foi-  murder  of  Robert  Sem])le,  June  10,  LSKJ,  had 
been  returned  against  four  persons  as  ])rincipals,  four  more  as  acces- 
sories before  the  fact  and  against  10  persons,  among  whom  w-ere 
Alex  McKenzie,  John  McDonald,  Siinon  Eraser,  Allen  McDonnell 
and  John  McLoughlin,  as  accessories  after  the  fact. 

Paul  Brown  and  Francois  F.  Boucher  were  the  only  ones  ar- 
rested as  ])rinci})als,  and  their  trial  began  October  19,  1818.  The 
evidence  and  Judge's  charge  cover  225  pages,  and  in  less  than  an 
hour — in  fact  before  the  Judges  had  left  the  courtroom  when  they 
had  adjourned  court  for  an  hour — the  jury  acquitted  the  prisoners. 
The  trial  lasted  nine  days. 

Trial  of  the  accessories,  October  30,  1818:  John  Siveright,  as 
accessory  both  before  and  after  the  fact,  and  Alexander  McKenzie, 
Hugh  McOillis,  John  McDonald,  John  McLoughlin  and  Simon  Era- 
ser, as  accessories  after  the  fact,  were  put  on  trial.  The  report 
covers  155  ])ages,  and  in  three-quarters  of  an  hour  the  jury  acquitted 
all  the  defendants. 

This  is  followed  by  the  report  of  the  trial  of  John  Cooper  and 
Hugh  Bennerman,  Red  River  settlers  who  had  left  the  colony  for 
stealing  a  cannon,  Avhich  resulted  in  their  acquittal. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  309 

On  p.  200  of  the  part  relating  to  the  trial  of  the  accessories  and 
of  Cooper  and  Beunerman  is  a  postscript  stating  that  on  February 
22,  1819,  the  Grand  Jury  at  York,  Upper  Canada,  had  indicted 
Thomas  Douglas,  Earl  of  Selkirk,  Miles  McDonnell,  P.  C.  Pambrun, 
John  Pritchard  and  others  to  the  number  of  20  in  all,  for  a  con- 
spiracy to  ruin  the  trade  of  the  North  West  Co. 

This  is  followed  by  the  reports  of  two  civil  cases,  William  Smith 
(the  constable  to  whose  warrant  Selkirk  had  refused  to  submit)  vs. 
the  Earl  of  Selkirk,  and  Daniel  McKenzie  vs.  the  Earl  of  Selkirk, 
each  for  false  imprisonment  at  Fort  William.  Smith  recovered  £500 
and  McKenzie  £1,000  damages. 

(P.  155)  "So  far  as  regarded  the  seizure  of  property  and  the  in- 
terruption of  trade  (i.  e.,  of  the  North  West  Co.  by  the  Earl  of  Sel- 
kirk) the  point  was  decided  by  the  Prince  Regent's  proclamation  of 
the  3rd  of  May,  1817,  in  consequence  of  which  the  North  W'est  Co. 
recovered  possession  of  their  property  and  re-established  their  trade ; 
but  that  proclamation  left  the  rights  of  parties  and  the  crimes  al- 
leged against  individuals  to  be  investigated  and  decided  upon  by 
law." 

Selkirk  did  not  again  appear  in  America,  but,  broken  in  health, 
retired  to  the  south  of  France,  and  died  at  Pau,  April  8,  1820. 

Meanwhile  the  contemptuous  disobedience  to  the  proclamation  of 
the  Prince  Eegent  by  Governor  Williams  and  his  mercenaries,  espe- 
cially his  wholly  inexcusable  arrest  of  leaders  of  the  North  West 
Co.,  and  his  sending  them  to  Hudson's  Bay,  whence  some  were  trans- 
ported to  England  and  some  to  Canada,  where  they  were  imme- 
diately released  without  any  attempt  at  trying  them  for  anything; 
and,  worst  of  all,  his  arrest  of  the  famous  Benjamin  Frobisher, 
against  whom  there  was  neither  accusation  nor  warrant,  and  send- 
ing him  a  prisoner  to  Hudson's  Bay,  whence  he  escaped  with  two 
companions,  though  suffering  from  a  severe  wound  in  the  head,  and 
started  on  foot  for  the  nearest  North  West  Co.'s  po.st,  some  500  miles 
distant,  and  though  of  an  iron  constitution,  perished  from  starva- 
tion on  the  way,  in  November,  1819,  stirred  both  Canada  and  Eng- 
land with  intense  indignation. 

The  Duke  of  Richmond,  then  Governor  General  of  Canada,  at 
once  sent  two  officers  of  his  suite  to  the  Red  River  with  dispatches 
enjoining  obedience  to  the  laws,  while  the  North  West  Co.  warned 
the  Home  Government  that  if  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  or  Lord  Sel- 
kirk and  his  agents,  continued  their  illegal  acts  intended  to  ruin 
their  business,  they  would  resist  with  arms. 

These  representations  caused  the  Home  Government  to  notify 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  directors  that  they  must  stop  the  lawless 
outrages  of  their  subordinates  against  the  North  W^st  Co.  or  take 
the  consequences. 


310  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

Under  the  pressure  of  the  Home  Government  (which  saw  no 
other  way  to  secure  peace  in  the  Indian  country),  on  March  26, 
1821,  the  contract  of  consolidation  of  the  companies  was  signed, 
each  to  furnish  half  the  capital  and  to  share  ecpially  the  profits,  but 
all  in  the  name  of  the  Hudson's  ]?ay  Co. 

The  new  comjjany,  however,  adopted  ///  toto  the  organization  and 
methods  of  conducting  the  business  of  the  North  West  Co.  (which 
experience  had  jjroved  vastly  superior  to  those  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.),  by  which  there  were  three  principal  classes  of  employes  in  the 
Indian  country,  viz:  Clerks  (on  salaries  ranging  from  £20  to  £100 
a  year),  chief  traders  and  chief  factors,  with  an  elaborate  scheme 
for  promoting  clerks  to  chief  traders,  and  chief  traders  to  chief  fac- 
tors, and  for  retiring  chief  factors  and  chief  traders  when  they 
might  desire  it  (if  consistent  with  the  continued  prosperity  of  the 
business). 

As  the  compensation  of  chief  traders  and  chief  factors  was  a 
certain  share  of  the  profits,  and  as  if  there  were  losses  instead  of 
profits,  those  losses  were  charged  up  against  and  deducted  from  the 
profits  of  subsequent  years  instead  of  being  deducted  from  the  capi- 
tal stock,  this  plan  insured  a  constant  succession  of  the  most  capable 
men  for  the  leading  positions,  all  carefully  trained  through  long 
years  of  a])prenticeship  as  clerks  before  they  could  become  chief 
traders  and  chief  traders  before  they  could  become  chief  factors,  and 
all  having  the  keen  interest  of  partners  in  the  success  of  the  busi- 
ness. 

Hy  the  contract  of  consolidation  ''There  were  25  chief  factors 
and  28  chief  traders  appointed,  who  were  named  in  alternate  suc- 
cession from  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  and  the  North  West  Co.'s  ser- 
vants. The  servants  of  both  companies  were  placed  on  an  equal 
footing.''  (Cf.  ''The  Hudson's  Bay  Territories,  etc.,  by  R.  M.  Martin, 
Esq.,  Author  of  the  History  of  the  British  Colonies,"  London,  1849, 
p.  50;  also  ''The  Canadian  Northwest,"  etc.,  pp.  145-6.) 

As  the  Red  River  Colony  could  no  longer  be  carried  on  in  de- 
fiance of  the  i)roclaTnation  of  the  Prince  Regent,  in  a  spirit  of  hos- 
tility to  the  North  ^Vest  Co.'s  interests,  there  ceased  to  be  any  rea- 
son why  that  company  should  oppose  colonization,  and  so  "Even 
hostility  to  colonization  by  the  conditions  of  the  now  license  was 
specifically  forbidden."  (Cf.  "The  Canadian  North  West.  Its  His- 
tory and  Ks  Troubles.  By  G.  Mercer  Adams,"  Toronto,  1885,  p. 
148.) 

With  the  consolidation  of  the  two  coTni)nnies  and  the  death  of 
Lord  Selkirk,  it  ceased  to  be  neodlnl  1o  beguile  ICuropeans  into  mi- 
grating to  a  region  whose  situation  was  so  inaccessible  that  nothing 
the  colonists  raised  could  be  profitably  exported  till  more  than  half 
a  century  later,  wlicn  the  invention  of  Bessemer  steel  made  it  pos- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  311 

sible  to  substitute  steel  for  iron  in  rails  and  bridge  construction, 
and  so  to  reduce  freight  charges  on  railroads  that  regions  hundreds 
of  miles  from  navigable  water  could  be  densely  populated  by  com- 
munities accustomed  to  the  comforts  of  modern  civilized  life. 

On  p.  22  of  K.  M.  Martin's  ''Hudson's  Bay  Co.  Territories,  etc.," 
speaking  of  the  Red  River  Settlement,  he  says :  ''Lord  Selkirk  died 
in  1820,  since  which  period  no  emigrants  have  been  sent  out  from 
Europe."  .  .  .  "The  people  revel  in  abundance,  but  it  is  all  for 
home  consumption;  they  have  no  market  for  their  produce." 

The  only  things  obtainable  in  the  country  which  were  valuable 
enough  in  proportion  to  their  weight  to  pay  for  exportation  were 
furs  and  peltries,  in  which  their  ''landlord,"  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co., 
forbade  them  to  trade. 

It  is  not  within  the  scope  of  this  work  to  discuss  whether  or  not 
this  consolidation  and  the  means  by  which  it  was  accomplished  was 
good  for  the  world  at  large,  or  for  the  best  interests  of  British 
America,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  once  accomplished  it  exer- 
cised a  very  beneficial  influence  over  all  the  region  they  occupied 
on  the  relations  between  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  the  Indians,  and 
on  the  relations  between  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  Oregon  and  the 
Americans  who  went  there  to  explore  and  to  settle.  For  as  to  the 
Indians :  First,  they  had  no  longer  any  temptation  to  furnish  them 
liquor  to  prevent  them  going  to  rival  traders  who  would  furnish  it, 
and  thus  one  of  the  greatest  sources  of  Indian  demoralization  and 
ruin  was  done  away  with. 

Second,  they  could  prescribe  and  enforce  on  their  employes  uni- 
form rules  for  the  treatment  of  the  Indians,  which  treatment  in  a 
few  years'  time  gave  them  great  influence  over  all  the  Indians  with 
whom  they  came  in  contact. 

How  beneficial  that  influence  was  we  shall  speedily  see  by  the 
unanimous  contemporaneous  testimony  of  the  Americans  who  actu- 
ally went  to  Oregon  and  there  encountered  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s 
ofiicers  and  the  Indians. 

As  to  their  relation  to  the  American  exploration,  occupation  and 
settlement  of  Oregon,  the  chief  factors  and  chief  traders  who  were 
sent  to  the  Oregon  Country  understood  perfectly  that  here  was  no 
question  of  doubtful  rights,  as  in  the  case  of  the  claims  of  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  to  the  ownership  in  fee  simple  of  all  lands  draining 
into  Hudson's  Bay,  but  a  matter  of  certain  right,  established  by 
treaty  between  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain,  that  Ameri- 
cans had  exactly  the  same  rights  in  any  part  of  the  Oregon  Terri- 
tory as  they  had  while  the  treaty  continued  in  force,  and  their  ex- 
perience of  the  disastrous  conditions  during  the  long  contest  be- 
tween the  two  companies — to  whichever  one  they  originally  be- 
longed— would  most  powerfully  dispose  them  to  avoid  contentions 


312  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGOX 

and  to  live  in  peace  with  any  Americans  who  might  seek  to  estab- 
lish homes  for  themselves  in  Oregon. 

Tliej  also  nnderstood  perfectly  well  some  years  before  any 
Americans  went  to  Oregon  after  the  treaty  of  1818,  that  "in  no 
event  conld  the  British  claim  to  Oregon  extend  south  of  the  Co- 
lumbia," the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  having  officially  notified  Dr.  John 
McLoughlin  so  in  1825  (Cf.  Copy  of  a  Document,  etc.,  in  Tr.  O. 
P.  A.,  ISSO,  p.  4!),  (pioted  herein  (pp.  421)4:«),  infra),  and  they 
equally  well  knew  that  by  the  express  terms  of  the  treaties  of  1818 
and  1S27  uofhing  done  by  either  nation  in  establishing  trading  ])osts 
or  making  settleiiients  while  those  treaties  remained  in  force  could 
in  any  way  affect  the  question  of  title  to  Oregon. 

As  to  the  disastrous  effects  of  the  comjietition  with  the  North 
West  Co.  on  the  business  of  the  Hudson's  liay  Co  (aggravated,  it 
is  true,  as  to  the  years  1800-1815  by  the  Napoleonic  wars),  it  ap- 
pears from  a  letter  of  J.  H.  Pelly,  Governor  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.,  to  the  Lords  of  the  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council  for  Trade, 
dated  February  7,  1838,  that  in  the  years  1800-1807  their  dividends 
were  only  4%  a  year,  1808-1813  there  were  no  dividends  and  1814- 
1821  their  dividends  were  only  4%  a  year.  (Cf.  Vol.  9,  Keport  of 
Case  of  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  P.  S.  Agl.  Co.  vs.  V.  S.,  being  Argu- 
ment of  Caleb  Cushing,  p.  23.) 

When  the  consolidation  was  made  the  capital  was  doubled,  but 
how  much  of  this  was  ''water"  cannot  be  told,  as  the  capital  was  so 
largely  a  matter  of  stocks  of  furs  and  merchandise  and  transporta- 
tion facilities — horses,  carts,  canoes,  boats,  etc.,  and  weapons  and 
forts — the  inventorying  of  which  gave  much  opportunity  for  over- 
estimation. 

On  this  capital  stock  of  £400,000  dividends  of  4%  were  paid  in 
1823-24,  from  1824  to  1841  half-yearly  dividends  of  5%,  with  bon- 
uses of  10%  for  the  years  1828  and  1832,  and  an  average  bonus  of 
6%  annually  from  1832  to  1841,  making  in  all  an  average  yearly 
profit  of  about  14%,  against  a  little  less  than  2%%  on  an  average 
from  1800  to  1833,  inclusive.  (Cf.  R.  M.  Martin's  Hudson's  Bay 
Territories,  p.  56.) 

By  the  contract  of  consolidation  of  ^March  20,  1821,  five  shares, 
or  one-twentieth  of  the  capital  stock,  was  allotted  to  the  Governor 
and  company  {i.  e.,  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.)  "in  order  to  carry 
into  eff'ect  certain  arrangements  to  be  by  them  made  with  the  rep- 
resentatives of  the  said  Earl  of  Selkirk,  deceased,"  and  by  the  con- 
tract of  September  15,  1824,  it  was  declared  that  "the  said  repre- 
sentatives had  boon  admitted  members  of  the  company  and  proprie- 
tors of  stock  in  li(Mi  thereof."  (Cf.  Vol.  1.,  ])p.  282  and  296,  Kept, 
of  Cases  of  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  P.  S.  Agl.  Co.  vs.  U.  S.) 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  313 

In  1835  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  purchased  from  the  heirs  of  Sel- 
kirk all  their  claims  to  the  116,000  square  miles  of  land  and  all  their 
interest  in  the  improvements  at  Eed  River  Colony. 

"The  price,  being  the  amount — £85,000 — which  it  had  cost  His 
Lordship  and  his  executors  to  found  and  so  far  maintain  this  set- 
tlement in  the  wilderness."  (Cf.  "The  Canadian  Northwest,  by  G. 
Mercer  Adams,"  p.  173.) 

Justin  Winsor,  in  his  "Narrative  and  Critical  History  of  Amer- 
ica," Vol.  8,  p.  01,  says:  "In  1830  the  company  had  paid  to  the 
heirs  of  Lord  Selkirk  for  the  return  of  the  Red  River  Territory  a 
sum  which  stood  on  its  books  as  a  balance  between  the  cost,  the  in- 
terest added  and  the  profits  deducted  at  £84,111." 

Before  entering  on  the  true  relations  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
to  the  American  exploration,  occupation  and  settlement  of  Oregon, 
two  results  of  this  contest  and  the  books  published  about  it  are 
worthy  of  notice. 

First — "In  Chapter  VI.  we  have  noticed  the  report  of  Secretary 
of  War,  John  C.  Calhoun,  on  December  5,  1818,  recommending  the 
chartering  by  Congress  of  a  great  fur  company,  which  should  have 
a  monopoly  of  trading  with  the  Indians  in  all  of  our  Indian  coun- 
try." 

There  can  be  no  doubt  but  what  these  disturbances  between  the 
North  West  Co.,  of  which  fullest  knowledge  was  spread  at  that 
precise  time  by  these  books  published  in  the  interest  of  the  two 
companies,  and  by  newspaper  articles,  had  a  great  if  not  a  decisive 
influence  in  defeating  the  project  for  a  LTnited  States  fur-trading 
monopoly. 

Its  opponents  could  ask  no  better  arguments  against  it  than 
to  say :  "Look  across  the  boundary  into  Canada  and  see  what  whole- 
sale oppression,  robbery  and  murder  of  whites  and  demoralization 
of  Indians  a  fur-trading  monopoly  and  the  attempt  to  maintain  it 
has  produced  for  the  past  five  or  six  years" — for  then  the  new  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  monopoly  was  not  created. 

Second — There  is  no  doubt  that  a  large  part  of  the  false  charges 
made  by  newspapers  and  the  "Oregon  Jingo"  politicians,  in  the 
years  1820  to  1840,  against  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  of  having  in- 
cited the  Indians  to  attack  and  kill  Americans  in  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains, and  of  opposing  American  settlement  in  Oregon,  which  were 
later  revived  and  amplified  by  Gray  and  Spalding  and  other  advo- 
cates of  the  Whitman  Legend,  are  examples  of  that  most  common 
source  of  historical  errors,  the  transference  to  the  valley  of  the  Co- 
lumbia by  credulous  and  careless  and  myth-loving  minds  of  their 
vague  recollections  of  what  they  had  read  in  these  various  books 
about  what  actually  took  place  in  the  Red  River  Valley. 


314  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

Though  these  books  are  now  very  rare  they  must  have  been  com- 
THOii  PTioujih  in  the  years  181(1  to  1S40  or  1S50,  and  McLonjihlin  and 
Fanibrun,  names  j)i'OTniiient  in  them,  were  also  prominent  in  Ore- 
gon ;  McLoughlin,  Chief  Factor,  in  charge  of  the  whole  Oregon  coun- 
try, with  headquarters  at  Fort  Vancouver,  and  Pambrun  at  Walla 
Walla,  till  his  accidental  death  in  May,  1841.  Let  us  now  examine 
briefly  the  accusations  made  against  the  Hudson's  Ray  Co.  by  the 
leading  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Legend,  and  then  the  indisput- 
able proofs  of  their  total  falsity  in  the  contemporaneous  testimony 
of  the  Americans  themselves  on  the  subject. 

At  the  request,  first  of  the  late  Dr.  Justin  Winsor  more  than  a 
score  of  years  ago,  when  he  was  librarian  of  the  Boston  Public 
Lib!-ary,  and  later  of  various  other  librarians  and  historians,  that 
a  thorough  study  should  be  made  of  this  subject,  I  have  carefully 
examined  during  the  past  23  years  every  diary  and  contemporary 
letter,  published  and  unpublished,  to  which  I  could  get  access,  and 
every  re])ort  to  the  Government,  and  every  news])a])er  and  magazine 
article  I  could  find,  and  every  book  published  by  each  and  every 
American — fur  trader,  ship  captain,  leader  or  member  of  a  party 
of  settlers,  missionary,  scientist,  and  private  or  Government  ex- 
plorer— who  went  to  Oregon  at  any  time  before  the  treaty  of  1846 
settled  the  boundary,  and  who  was  at  any  post  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  in  that  territory,  and  have  copied  from  these  documents  every 
word  they  wrote  therein  about  their  treatment  by  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  oflicials,  at  any  and  all  places  where  they  met  them. 

In  the  cases  of  J.  L.  Meek,  and  some  other  pioneers,  and  of  the 
leaders  of  the  migrations  of  1844  and  1845,  and  of  the  first  Ameri- 
can settlers  north  of  the  Columbia  (in  184.5),  who  did  not,  as  far  as 
yet  appears,  leave  any  contemporaneous  written  records  of  their 
reception  and  treatment  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  (except  Joel  Pal- 
mer's Journal  hereinbefore  quoted),  I  have  studied  carefully  their 
statements  and  addresses  at  the  meetings  of  the  Oregon  Pioneer 
Association  and  their  testimony  in  the  cases  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  and  the  Puget  Sound  Agricultural  Co.  vs.  the  T'^nited  States^ 
and  coi)ied  all  that  related  to  their  own  personal  reception  and 
treatment  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  officers  and  employes  at  their 
various  posts  in  the  Oregon  Territory,  and  all  that  came  under  their 
own  observation  of  the  treatment  accorded  to  each  and  every  other 
American  of  honest  reputation  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  officers 
and  emj)loyes  anywhere  in  the  Oregon  Territory. 

The  whole  makes  more  than  200  pages  like  this,  and  Avhen  fairly 
quoted  in  connection  with  its  context  and  with  other  contemporane- 
ous documents  it  is  uniformly  favorable  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co., 
a  result  which  not  a  little  surprised  me,  for,  while  long  since  satis- 
fied that  the  vast  preponderance  of  the  contemporaneous  evidence 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  315 

was  on  that  side,  the  contrary  had  been  so  constantly  and  vehe- 
mently asserted  by  Benton  and  the  other  "Oregon  Jingoes"  in  Con- 
gress from  1825  to  1846,  and  by  Spalding  and  Gray  and  M.  Eells 
and  Barrows  and  Nixon  and  Craighead  and  Laurie  and  Coffin  and 
Penrose  and  the  other  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon 
Story,  that  I  supposed  that  there  must  be  somewhere  some  little 
valid  evidence  in  support  of  their  accusations  against  the  company. 

Plenty  of  noisy  politicians  and  reckless  newspaper  editors  in 
the  States,  no  one  of  whom  had  ever  been  within  from  1,000  to  2,000 
miles  of  any  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  post  in  Oregon  during  all  these 
years,  were  "twisting  the  tail  of  the  British  lion"  by  vehemently 
denouncing  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  for  committing  all  kinds  of 
wrongs  upon  each  and  every  unfortunate  American  who  entered 
Oregon ;  but  not  only  is  there  not  a  single  sentence  in  all  the  con- 
temporaneous written  and  printed  records  made  by  those  Ameri- 
cans who  actually  went  to  Oregon,  which,  taken  fairly  in  connec- 
tion with  its  context,  shows  the  least  opposition  on  the  part  of  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  officers  and  employes  to  the  exploration  of  any 
or  all  of  Oregon  by  Americans,  or  to  the  establishment  of  missions 
therein,  or  the  making  of  settlements  anywhere  in  Oregon  (except- 
ing of  course  on  the  lands  already  occupied  by  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.,  which  were  not  the  one-ten-thousaudth  part  of  the  whole  of 
the  territory),  but  there  is  the  most  abundant  evidence  that  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  aided  every  American  of  decent  character  who 
sought  to  explore  any  part  of  the  Oregon  Territory,  or  to  found  mis- 
sions or  begin  settlements  therein. 

When  any  of  these  Americans  attempted  to  wrest  the  fur  trade 
from  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  they  were  met  with  vigorous  competi- 
tion, but  even  this  was  no  fiercer  than  rival  American  fur  compa- 
nies waged  with  each  other  in  regions  farther  east  in  the  Rocky 
Mountain  country  where  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  never  had  a  trading 
post. 

It  is  true,  also,  that  a  few  of  these  people  from  whom  I  quote, 
notably  Captain  Spaulding  of  the  ship  Lausanne,  which  carried  out 
the  great  reinforcement  of  52  persons  to  the  Methodist  Mission  in 
1840,  after  speaking  in  the  warmest  terms  of  the  unbounded  kind- 
ness that  he  personally  and  all  his  52  passengers  received  from  the 
day  the  ship  entered  the  Columbia  till  it  left,  indulges  in  severe 
strictures  on  the  policy  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  toward  the  Indians. 

As  this,  however,  relates  to  matters  hundreds  of  miles  from  any 
place  where  he  was,  and  of  which  he  could  have  no  opportunity  for 
personal  observation,  and  as  it  was  squarely  contradicted  by  many 
a  staunch  American  fur  trader  who  had  had  amplest  opportunity 
for  personal  observation,  it  requires  no  farther  comment  than  to 


316  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

state  tluit  it  was  mere  unsupported  hearsay,  unworthy  of  the  slight- 
est credence. 

Simihirly  Kev.  G.  Ilines,  one  of  this  1840  party,  after  the  Meth- 
odist Mission  was  broken  up  in  1844,  returned  to  the  States  and  in 
1850  published  in  New  York  his  '-ITistory  of  Oregon,"  and  though 
repeatedly  acknowledging  tlie  unbounded  kindness  with  which  he 
and  his  missionary  associates  had  been  treated  by  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.,  he  indulges  in  unfayorable  criticism  of  the  course  of  the  com- 
pany in  opposing  settlement,  mixing  the  conditions  of  the  Red  Riyer 
country,  where  the  coiu])any  claimed  absolute  title  to  the  soil,  with 
the  conditions  in  Oregon,  where  they  ueyer  claimed  any  other  or 
greater  rights  than  any  American  had,  and  eyidently  transferring 
to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  the  actions  of  the  North  \Yest  Co.  in  oppos- 
ing the  establishment  of  the  Red  Riyer  Colony,  as  stated  herein- 
before. 

This  eyidence  from  the  best  sources  existing,  and  most  of  it  from 
strictly  original  sources,  and  much  of  it  neyer  yet  published,  is  from 
fiye  officers  of  the  United  States  Army  and  Nayy,  four  of  the  most 
famous  American  fur  traders,  ten  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  missionaries, 
two  independent  Protestant  missionaries,  six  Methodist  missionar- 
ies, two  scientists,  fourteen  leaders  of  parties  of  American  settlers 
who  were  neither  fur  traders  nor  missionaries,  and  two  of  Wyeth's 
1832  party  (which  was  the  first  party  of  Americans  to  migrate  to 
Oregon  for  the  purpose  of  founding  a  permanent  settlement  there) 
— in  all  45  persons.  While  I  hope  some  time  to  publish  the  whole 
of  this  eyidence  with  full  bibliography  of  it  all,  the  scope  of  this 
book  will  only  permit  quotations  of  part  of  it.  The  reader  may 
rest  assured  that  these  are  fair  samples  of  it  all,  and  that  the  ideas 
he  gets  from  these  sara])les  are  the  ideas  he  would  get  if  he  had  the 
whole  of  it  before  him. 

But  before  examining  this  contemporaneous  eyidence  let  us 
glance  at  the  accusations  made  against  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  b}'  the 
leading  adyocates  of  the  Whitman  Sayed  Oregon  Story. 

From  Gray's  "Oregon,"  p.  137:  "I  am  fully  aware  of  the  great 
number  of  pensioned  satellites  that  haye  fawned  for  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  pap,  and  would  swear  no  injustice  was  ever  done  to  a  single 
American,  giying  this  hyjtocritical,  double-dealing,  smooth-swind- 
ling, called  hcmorable  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  credit  for  what  they  neyer 
did,  and  really  for  stealing  credit  for  good  deeds  done  by  others." 
.  .  .  "An  oyergrown  monopoly,  in  using  its  influence  with  Ca- 
tholicism to  destroy  IM-otestnutism  in  Oregon  and  the  American  set- 
tlements, has  destroyed  itself." 

Idem,  p.  150.  "The  Protestant  missions  were  not  dependent  on 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  for  su])])lies,  any  more  than  the  Sandwich 
Islands   were,    or   the    American    Fur    Co.    were.     .     .     Whitman's 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  317 

party  brought  seeds  of  all  kinds.  They  had  no  occasion  to  ask  of 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  a  single  seed  for  farming  purposes,  a  single 
thing  in  establishing  their  mission,  only  as  they  had  disposed  of 
things  at  the  suggestion  of  McLeod  and  McKay"  (in  July,  1836,  at 
Green  River)  "as  unnecessary  to  pack  them  further." 

This  is  what  Gray  wrote  in  1870,  but  May  20,  1836,  Rev.  H.  H. 
Spalding  wrote  to  D.  Greene,  Secretary,  a  letter  (never  yet  pub- 
lished), from  Otoe  Agency,  mouth  of  the  Platte  River  (more  than 
900  miles  east  of  Green  River),  in  which  is  the  following: 

"We  find  that  we  must  leave  many  things  we  consider  almost 
indispensable.  My  classical  and  theological  books  will  nearly  all 
be  left.    We  can  take  no  seeds  except  a  few  garden  seeds." 

Gray  (p.  383)  :  "The  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  under  the  guidance  of 
James  Douglas  and  P.  S.  Ogden,  carried  forward  their  plans  and 
arrangements  by  placing  men  at  their  posts  along  the  line  of  the 
immigrant  route,  who  were  doing  all  they  could  by  misrepresenta- 
tion and  falsehood  to  deceive  and  rob  those  who  were  journeying  to 
this  country."  (p.  532)  :  "That  this  influence"  (i.  c,  of  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.)  was  exerted  to  destroy  that  mission"  {i.  e.,  Whit- 
man's) there  can  be  no  doubt," 

Gray's  outrageous  accusations  against  Captain  Grant  we  have 
shown  (in  Chapter  V.  mite)  to  be  directly  contrary  to  the  facts. 

Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding's  Memorial  in  his  pamphlet  (published  as 
Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  No.  37,  41st  Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  p.  42)  :  "The  said  Whit- 
man massacre,  and  the  long  and  expensive  wars  that  followed,  were 
commenced  by  the  above  said  British  monopoly"  (i.  e.,  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co. )  "for  the  purpose  of  breaking  up  the  American  settlements, 
and  of  regaining  the  territory,  and  that  they  were  especially  cha- 
grined against  the  said  Whitman  as  being  the  principal  agent  in 
disappointing  their  schemes." 

This  accusation  is  repeated  many  times  with  slight  variations  in 
phraseology  in  this  pamphlet. 

Barrows'  "Oregon"  copies,  amplifies  and  reiterates  these  ac- 
cusations, and  so  do  Nixon  and  Cofiin,  while  Craighead,  Mowry 
and  M.  Eells,  though  avoiding  direct  citation  of  several  of  the  more 
outrageous  of  these  accusations,  not  only  by  endorsing  Gray  and 
Spalding  as  honest  and  trustworthy,  and  quoting  largely  from  them, 
but  also  by  direct  charges  against  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  create  in 
the  minds  of  their  readers  the  belief  that  that  company  were  guilty 
of  all  the  wicked  practices  against  American  explorers,  settlers  and 
missionaries  of  which  Gray  and  Spalding  and  Barrows  have  ac- 
cused them.  Thus  Mowry  (pp.  225-6)  on  the  "Causes  of  the  Whit- 
man Massacre,"  instead  of  quoting  the  letters  of  Whitman,  Spald- 
ing and  Mrs.  Whitman,  which  show  plainly  enough  the  true  causes, 
says  (p.  225)  :     "The  Oregon  Presbytery  of  the  Old  School  Presby- 


318  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGOX 

terian  Church,  after  a  lull  investigation,  adopted  a  report  which 
says :  'The  causes  of  the  massacre  were  reducible  to  two,  viz. : 
"The  purpose  of  the  Euglish  Government,  or  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  to  exclude  American  settlers  from  the  country;  and  the  efforts 
of  Catholic  priests  to  prevent  the  introduction  of  education  and 
Protestantism,  by  j)reventing  the  settlement  of  American  citizens; 
and  the  efforts  whirh  both  parties  made,  operating  on  the  ignorant 
and  suspicious  minds  of  the  savages,  led  to  the  butchery  in  which 
twenty-five  lives  were  lost.'  "  How  ''full"  this  "investigation"  was  i» 
shown  by  the  fact  that  there  were  but  14  lives  lost  in  this  massacre 
(p.  226).  "There  is  no  question  but  that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  in 
its  interests  and  feelings,  was  largely  antagonistic  to  the  American 
movement,  and  therefore  to  the  work  of  the  Protestant  missiona- 
ries. Some  of  its  officers  can  hardly  be  held  blameless."  But  he  is 
very  careful  not  to  name  any  of  those  officers,  nor  to  specify  any 
evidences  of  this  alleged  "antagonism  to  the  work  of  the  Protestant 
missionaries." 

Craighead  declares  (p.  OG)  :  "They"  (/.  e.,  the  American  mis- 
sionaries) "necessarily  encountered  the  opposition  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.  in  their  efforts  to  improve  the  material  conditions  of  the 
people  among  whom  they  labored,  and  the  power  of  the  company 
at  that  time  was  well  nigh  irresistible." 

Idem  (p.  54)  :  "From  this  time  forward"  (i.  e.,  1838,  when  the 
first  Catholic  missionaries  arrived  in  Oregon. — W.  I.  M.)  "there  was 
also  a  marked  change  in  the  feelings  of  most  of  the  company  toward 
the  Protestant  missionaries." 

Idem  (p.  55)  :  "The  jealousy  and  unfriendliness  of  which  we 
have  spoken  was  not  exhibited  toward  the  Protestant  missionaries 
alone,  but  toward  all  ])ersons  wishing  to  settle  in  and  improve  the 
country,  and  esi»ecially  to  Americans." 

Let  us  see  now  how  these  accusations  appear  in  view  of  all  the 
contemporaneous  testimony  that  can  be  found  of  American  mis- 
sionaries, settlers,  explorers,  fur  traders,  scientists  and  TTnited 
States  military  and  naval  officers  who  actually  went  to  Oregon. 

The  first  Americans  who  have  left  any  record  of  their  experience 
at  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  posts  in  Oregon  are  two  of  the  most 
famous  of  the  fur  trnders,  Joshua  Pilcher,  who  in  1827  set  out  from 
St.  Louis,  followed  the  Platte  to  the  Rocky  Mountains,  crossed  at 
the  South  Pass,  explored  what  is  now  Eastern  Idaho  and  Western 
Montana,  and  spent  the  winter  of  1828-0  in  the  Flathead  Valley, 
where  he  met  a  Hudson's  P»ay  Co.  trader,  who  invited  him  to  Fort 
Colvile,  their  most  important  post  on  the  Tipper  Columbia.  Here 
he  was  most  kindly  received  and  hospitably  entertained,  and  invited 
to  join  their  annual  east-bound  express,  which  he  did,  and  went  with 
them  u])  the  Columbia  and  across  the  mountains  and  down  the  Sas- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  319 

katchewan  to  the  Red  River  Settlement,  and  thence  across  the  prai- 
ries to  the  Missouri  River,  and  so  back  to  St.  Louis  in  June,  1830. 
Jedediah  Smith  led  a  party  of  eighteen  fur  traders  to  and  through 
California  and  then  turned  north,  and  in  Oregon  was  attacked  in 
August,  1828,  by  the  Rogue  River  Indians,  and  all  but  Smith  and 
three  other  men  were  killed  and  all  the  furs  stolen. 

The  survivors  soon  after  reached  Fort  Vancouver,  where  they 
were  welcomed  and  freely  entertained,  and  Dr.  McLoughlin  at  once 
fitted  out  a  strong  party,  who  proceeded  to  the  scene  of  the  massacre 
and  recovered  the  greater  part  of  the  furs,  which  he  afterward  pur- 
chased from  Mr.  Smith  on  terms  satisfactory  to  him. 

Nothing  more  chivalrous  and  courteous  is  recorded  in  the  annals 
of  commerce  than  the  reception  and  treatment  of  these  American 
rivals  in  the  fur  trade  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  and  in  their  letters 
to  the  Secretary  of  War,  written  in  the  autumn  of  1830,  and  pub- 
lished with  other  documents  relating  to  the  fur  trade  and  the  ex- 
ploration of  the  Rocky  Mountain  and  Pacific  Coast  regions,  in  Sen. 
Ex.  Doc.  39,  21st  Cong.,  2d  Sess.  (of  which  1,500  extra  copies  were 
ordered  to  be  printed  January  26,  1831),  both  Pilcher  and  Smith, 
while  pointing  out  to  the  Government  the  legislation  needful  to 
enable  the  American  fur  traders  to  compete  on  something  like  equal 
terms  with  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  and  urging  the  abrogation  of  the 
treaty  of  1827,  and  the  assertion  of  our  title  to  Oregon,  did  not  for- 
get to  make  grateful  mention  of  their  obligations  to  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.  for  most  kind  and  hospitable  treatment,  as  follows : 

From  Pilcher's  letter  to  the  Secretary  of  War. 

"I  remained  20  days  at  Fort  Colvile,  received  the  most  kind  and 
hospitable  treatment  from  the  gentlemen  of  the  post;  and  having 
received  from  them  an  offer  of  the  protection  of  their  annual  express 
packet  along  the  line  of  their  posts  and  establishments,  across  the 
continent  to  Lake  Winnipic,  I  determined  to  accept  it,  and  relin- 
quished the  intention  of  going  down  the  Columbia  to  its  mouth. 
(P.  10)  I  set  out  from  Fort  Colvile  the  21st  of  September,  1829,  in 
company  with  six  men  of  the  post  carrying  annual  express  or  packet 
across  the  continent. 

^'Our  route  was  up  the  main  river  Columbia;  our  conveyance  a 
batteau  of  four  or  five  tons.  In  this  batteau  we  ascended  the  river 
about  300  miles,  when  the  river  divides  into  three  forks,  the  main 
one  being  still  navigable  to  its  head,  which  issues  from  a  lake  in  the 
Rocky  Mountains.  We  arived  at  the  Boat  Encampment  the  4th  of 
October  and  remained  there  till  the  2nd  of  November,  waiting  for 
the  arrival  of  a  party  from  Hudson's  Bay.  They  arrived  at  the  end 
of  this  time,  and  by  them  I  had  the  happiness  to  hear  from  the 
United  States.    The  news  had  of  course  to  be  somewhat  old,  as  they 


320  ACQUI8ITI0X    OF    ONEGOX 

broujjht  it  from  Hndson's  Bay.  One  item  of  intelligence  was  the 
election  of  President  Jackson,  which  had  taken  place  just  about  one 
year  before;  and  here  I  met  the  master  ship  carpenter  of  whom  I 
have  spoken  going  on  to  Fort  \'ancouver.''  November  4th  they  set 
out  on  horseback  to  cross  the  continental  divide,  the  summit  of 
which  they  reached  in  three  days.  (p.  11)  "Where  two  small  ])onds 
within  a  few  yards  of  each  other  send  their  waters  in  opposite  di- 
rections, forming  the  head  sources  of  the  Athabasca  and  the  mid- 
dle fork  of  the  Columbia."  I  p.  12)  "^^'e  were  still  on  foot  and  on 
snowshoes ;  but  my  fatigue  and  labor  in  traveling  were  greatly  les- 
sened by  a  most  valuable  present,  kindly  made  me  by  Mr.  Round" 
(the  Hudson's  Bay  agent  in  charge  of  Edmonton  House)  "of  a 
carrole  and  three  good  dogs  to  draw  it,  which  carried  my  baggage 
always  and  myself  often."  .  .  .  *'My  company  from  Carlton 
House  was  two  Indians,  trained  up  to  the  service  of  the  Company 
and  well  fitted  for  the  part  they  had  to  act,  vigilant,  active,  faithful, 
and  full  of  resources  for  conquering  the  difficulties  of  the  way.  One 
of  them  had  brought  the  express  from  York  Factory  on  Hudson's 
Bay,  about  1,000  miles  on  foot,  on  a  pair  of  snowshoes;  and  they 
Avere  now  carrying  the  ex])ress  back.  This  express  consisted  not 
only  of  letters,  but  of  all  the  accounts  of  the  Company  collected 
from  every  post,  and  transmitted  annually  along  the  whole  line, 
from  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  to  Hudson's  Bay,  and  thence  to 
the  i)artners  in  England.  With  these  valuable  dispatches  these  In- 
dians were  intrusted,  and  everything  safely  and  expeditiously  con- 
ducted." 

He  was  hospitably  entertained  by  Governor  McKenzie  at  Red 
River  Settlement  for  three  days;  left  there  ]\rarch  20th,  and  trav- 
eled across  the  country  to  the  Mandan  Indian  villages,  where  he 
arrived  April  22,  1830,  and  considered  his  journey  terminated  there, 
though  he  was  still  1,000  miles  from  St.  Louis,  (p.  13)  ''I  had 
been  seven  months  getting  from  Fort  Colvile  to  the  Mandans,  hav- 
ing been  detained  three  and  a  half  months  on  the  route,  and  having 
traveled  near  2,500  miles  between  these  two  points  during  the  win- 
ter months,  and  chiefly  on  snowshoes."  ,  .  .  'Trom  the  gentle- 
men of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  I  experienced  everywhere  the  most 
kind  and  hospitable  treatment,  for  which  my  thanks  and  gratitude 
are  eminently  due  and  cordially  rendered." 

(P.  17)  ''Both  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  citizens  of  the  United 
States  engage  in  trapping,  and  each  suffers  occasionally  from  the 
attacks  of  the  Indians.  And  here  I  take  occasion  as  an  act  of  jus- 
tice to  the  gentlemen  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  say  that  I  saw 
nothing  to  justify  the  opinion  that  they  excited  the  Indians  to  kill 
and  rob  our  citizens."  (Cf.  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  39,  pp.  9-17,  also  copy  of 
a  document  found  among  the  papers  of  Dr.  John  McLoughlin  in 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  321 

Transcript  Oregon  Pioneer  Association,  1880,  pp.  46-55,  and  herein 
quoted  ( pp.  429-439,  infra ) ,  as  no  one  can  understand  the  beginning 
of  settlement  in  Oregon  without  reading  that  document  carefully.) 

Mr.  Jedediah  S.  Smith  wrote,  at  the  end  of  the  letter  signed  by 
himself  and  his  two  partners,  David  E.  Jackson  and  W.  L.  Sublette, 
as  follows :  "One  of  the  undersigned,  to-wit,  Jedediah  S.  Smith,  in 
his  excursions  west  of  the  mountains  arrived  at  the  post  of  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  called  Fort  Vancouver,  near  the  mouth  of  the  Mult- 
nomah River. 

"He  arrived  there  in  August,  1828,  and  left  the  12th  of  March, 
1829,  and  made  observations  which  he  deems  it  material  to  com- 
municate to  the  Government.  .  .  The  crop  of  1828  was  700  bush- 
els of  wheat.  The  grain  full  and  plump  and  making  good  flour; 
fourteen  acres  of  corn,  the  same  number  of  acres  of  peas,  eight  acres 
of  oats,  four  or  five  acres  of  barley  and  fine  garden,  some  small  apple 
trees  and  grapevines.  The  ensuing  spring  eighty  bushels  of  seed 
wheat  were  sown;  about  200  head  of  cattle,  fifty-two  horses  and 
breeding  mares,  300  head  of  hogs,  fourteen  goats,  the  usual  domes- 
tic fowls.  They  have  mechanics  of  various  kinds,  to-wit,  black- 
smiths, gunsmiths,  carpenters,  coopers,  tinner  and  baker,  a  good 
saw  mill  on  the  bank  of  the  river  five  miles  above,  a  grist  mill 
worked  by  hand,  but  intended  to  work  by  water."  .  .  .  "Their 
(i.  e.,  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s)  influence  over  the  Indians  is  now 
decisive.  Of  this  the  Americans  have  constant  and  striking  proofs, 
in  the  preference  which  they  give  to  the  British  in  every  particular. 

"In  saying  this,  it  is  an  act  of  justice  to  say  also  that  the  treat- 
ment received  by  Mr.  Smith  at  Fort  Vancouver  was  kind  and  hos- 
pitable, that  personally  he  owes  thanks  to  Governor  Simpson  and 
the  gentlemen  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  for  the  hospitable  entertain- 
ment he  received  from  them,  and  for  the  eflScient  and  successful  aid 
which  they  gave  him  in  recovering  from  the  Umpquah  Indians  a 
quantity  of  fur  and  many  horses  of  which  these  Indians  had  robbed 
him  in  1828.  As  to  the  injury  which  must  happen  to  the  United 
States  from  the  British  getting  control  of  all  the  Indians  beyond 
the  mountains,  building  and  repairing  ships  in  the  tidewaters  of 
the  Columbia,  and  having  a  station  there  for  privateers  and  vessels 
of  war,  is  too  obvious  to  need  a  recapitulation. 

"The  object  of  this  communication  being  to  state  facts  to  the 
Government,  and  to  show  the  facility  of  crossing  the  continent  to 
the  great  falls  of  the  Columbia  with  wagons,  the  ease  of  supporting 
any  number  of  men  by  driving  cattle  to  supply  them  where  there 
was  no  buflfalo,  and  also  to  show  the  true  nature  of  the  British  es- 
tablishments on  the  Columbia,  and  the  unequal  operation  of  the 
convention  of  1818. 


322  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

'•These  facts  being  coiiinninieated  to  the  Government,  they  con- 
sider that  they  have  complied  with  their  duty,  and  rendered  an  ac- 
ceptable service  to  the  administration;  and  respectfully  reipiest  you, 
sir,  to  lay  it  before  Tresident  Jackson." 

Capt.  B.  L.  E.  Bonneville,  of  the  United  States  Army,  was  the 
next  American  who  led  a  fur-tradinj^  pj^i'ty  into  the  Oregon  country 
(18.S2-35)  and  left  any  record  of  his  reception  and  treatment  there 
by  the  officers  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  with  whom  he  came  in 
contact. 

It  is  very  brief,  as  follows:  ''Capt.  Bonneville  and  his  comrades 
ex{)erienced  a  ])olite  reception  from  Mr.  Pambrune,  the  superin- 
tendent; for,  however  hostile  the  members  of  the  British  company 
may  be  to  the  enterprises  of  American  traders,  they  have  always 
manifested  great  courtesy  and  hospitality  to  the  traders  them- 
selv'es."  .  .  .  "As  he  stood  in  need  of  some  supplies  for  his 
journey,  ho  ;i]>plied  to  j)urchase  them  from  Mr.  Pambrune;  but  soon 
found  the  dilferenee  between  being  treated  as  a  guest  or  as  a  rival 
trader.  The  worthy  superintendent,  who  had  extended  to  him  all 
the  genial  rites  of  hospitality,  now  suddenly  assumed  a  withered  up 
aspect  and  demeanor,  and  observed  that,  however  he  might  feel  dis- 
posed to  serve  him  personally,  he  felt  bound  by  his  duty  to  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  to  do  nothing  which  should  facilitate  or  encourage 
the  visits  of  other  traders  among  the  Indians  in  that  part  of  the 
country."     (Cf.  Irving's  Bonneville,  Chajjter  XXXIV.) 

No  sensible  man  would  think  of  complaining  because  his  com- 
petitors in  business  were  unwilling  to  assist  him  with  supplies  to 
be  used  in  ti-iide  which  they  desired  to  keep  for  themselves,  and  in 
Bonneville's  unpublished  dispatches  in  the  War  Department  (which 
I  have  twice  gone  over  carefully)  there  is  not  a  word  of  censure  of 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  though  he  points  out  in  his  dispatch  dated 
Crow  Country,  July  29,  1833,  the  advantages  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
have  over  the  Americans  by  having  chea])er  goods,  etc.,  and  recom- 
mends our  Government  to  occupy  Oregon,  recommending  "a  full 
company"  for  the  purpose,  and  saying:  "Five  men  there  would  be 
as  safe  as  a  hundred,  eitlier  from  the  Indians,  who  are  extremely 
peaceable  and  honest,  or  from  the  establishments  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.,  who  are  themselves  too  much  exposed  by  their  numerous 
small  posts  ever  to  offer  the  least  violence  to  the  smallest  force." 

Nathaniel  J.  Wyeth,  in  1832,  led  out  a  small  party  of  settlers  to 
Oregon,  of  whom  eleven  arrived  at  Vancouver  and  eight  remained  in 
the  country,  and  were  very  kindly  received,  and  those  who  wished 
to  settle  were  helped  by  the  loan  of  tools,  seeds,  etc.,  and  began  the 
permanent  American  settlement  of  Oregon. 

One  member  of  this  ])jn'ly,  John  Ball,  a  graduate  of  Dartsmouth, 
was  promitlly  hired  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  teach  their  school 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  323 

at  Vancouver,  and  when  at  the  end  of  ten  weeks  he  resigned,  an- 
other member  of  it,  Solomon  H.  Smith,  was  employed,  and  remained 
in  charge  of  it  for  two  years,  and  on  the  expiration  of  his  term  Mr. 
Cyrus  Shepard,  one  of  the  laymen  who  went  out  with  the  Lees  in 
1834  to  found  the  Methodist  Mission,  was  employed  for  the  winter 
of  1834-5,  so  that  for  some  two  and  a  half  years  this,  the  first  school 
in  the  Oregon  country,  though  established  and  maintained  entirely 
by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  was  taught  by  Americans. 

"Silliman's  Journal"  (then  a  widely  circulated  periodical)  pub- 
lished in  its  December,  1833,  number,  an  article  by  Prof.  Eaton,  of 
Rensselaer  School,  Troy,  N.  Y.,  on  the  ^'Geology  and  Meteorology 
of  the  Rocky  Mountains,"  in  which  he  acknowledges  his  obligations 
to  John  Ball  for  very  valuable  observations,  and  says  his  last  let- 
ter was  dated  Fort  Vancouver,  March  3,  1833,  and  says:  ''Mc- 
Loughlin  raised  1,200  bushels  of  wheat  at  Vancouver  in  1832,  and 
a  great  quantity  of  barley,  peas,  potatoes,  etc."  .  .  .  "He  lent 
Mr.  Ball  oxen,  plough,  cows,  axes,  etc.,  and  he  commenced  plough- 
ing in  January  in  latitude  46  deg.  The  vegetables  of  the  preceding 
season  were  still  standing  in  gardens  untouched  by  frost.  New 
grass  had  sprung  up  sufficiently  for  excellent  pasture." 

Idem  (January,  1834)  In  an  article  on  the  fur  trade:  "The 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  are  humane  and  attentive  to  settlers,  encouraging 
them  both  with  assistance  and  protection,  but  they  are  extremely 
jealous  of  any  interference  or  participation  in  the  fur  trade." 

Idem  (July,  1835),  is  letter  from  John  Ball,  assigning  as  the 
only  reason  why  he  had  returned  to  the  States  that  he  had  no  wish 
to  follow  the  customs  of  the  country,  and  "become  identified  with 
the  natives"  (i.  e.,  marry  a  squaw). 

In  1833  Wyeth  returned  to  the  States  and  organized  "the  Co- 
lumbia Fishing  and  Trading  Co.,"  and  on  April  28,  1834,  set  out 
from  Independence,  Mo.,  for  Oregon  with  his  second  party,  consist- 
ing of  "between  fifty  and  sixty  men"  ("Lee  and  Frost's  Ten  Years  in 
Oregon,"  p.  114),  conveying  the  Methodist  missionary  party  and  the 
scientists,  J.  K.  Townsend  and  Thomas  Nuttall. 

He  took  a  large  bill  of  Indian  goods,  not  for  the  purpose  of  trade 
with  the  Indians,  but  to  deliver  to  the  Rocky  Mountain  Fur  Co.,  but 
that  company  refusing  to  keep  their  contract  with  him,  he  was 
obliged  to  establish  a  post  and  trade  them  to  the  Indians.  (Cf.  his 
letter  to  his  uncle,  Leonard  Jarvis,  from  Ham's  Fork  of  the  Colo- 
rado, June  21,  1834,  as  follows)  :  "The  companies  here  have  not 
complied  with  their  contracts  with  me,  and  in  consequence  I  am 
obliged  to  make  a  fort  on  Lewis  River  to  dispose  of  the  goods  I 
have  with  me."  (Cf.  "The  Correspondence  and  Journals  of  Nathan- 
iel J.  Wyeth,"  p.  135;  also  pp.  134,  137,  139.) 


324  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

This  fori  he  built  between  July  1.")  and  August  G,  1834,  aud  his 
journal  lor  August  t),  1834,  reads:  "Having  done  as  much  as  was 
reiiuisite  for  safety  to  the  fort  and  drank  a  bale  of  liquor,  and 
named  it  Fort  IJall  in  honor  of  the  oldest  partner  of  our  concern, 
we  left  it."  [Idem,  p.  227)  Two  years  later  he  sold  this  to  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  returned  to  Cambridge,  Mass.,  and  acquired  a 
competency  in  the  ice  business. 

The  advocates  of  the  \\'Iiitinan  Legend — following  W.  H.  (Jray — 
have,  with  one  voice,  accus(?d  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  of  oppressing 
Wyeth  and  driving  him  out  of  the  business  by  unfair  means,  and 
conveyed  the  ini]>ressi()n  llial  he  would  have  continued  in  the  busi- 
ness if  he  had  been  treated  fairly;  but  there  has  always  been 
abundant  proof,  though  not  easily  accessible,  that  these  accusations 
were  false,  and  that  lack  of  capital  and  of  willingness  on  the  part 
of  his  partners  in  the  east  (mostly  in  and  about  Boston,  who  fur- 
nished nearly  all  the  caj)ital)  to  hold  on  long  enough  for  a  paying 
business  to  be  built  up  were  the  causes  of  his  abandoning  Oregon. 

In  1899  the  Oregon  Historical  Society  printed,  as  Vol.  I.  of  the 
"Sources  of  Oregon  History,"  "The  Correspondence  and  Journals  of 
Nalhauiel  J.  Wyeth"  (p.  262  with  maps),  which  furnishes  over- 
whelming proof  that  it  w^as  caused  by  the  above  stated  reasons,  to- 
gether with  sundry  misfortunes  for  which  no  mortal  was  respon- 
sible, viz.,  the  delay  of  his  brig,  May  Dacre  (sent  round  Cape  Horn, 
which  was  struck  by  lightning  and  obliged  to  ])ut  into  Valparaiso 
for  three  months  for  repairs,  and  so  did  not  arrive  in  the  Columbia 
till  Sej)tember,  1834,  after  the  salmon  season  was  entirely  over),  and 
an  epidemic  of  malarious  disease  which  carried  off  thirteen  of  his 
party,  as  stated  in  his  letters  as  follows: 

Corres])ondence  (pp.  146-7),  Wyeth  to  his  uncle,  Leonard  Jarvis. 

"Columbia  Kiver,  October  6,  1834.  ...  On  the  14th  ulto. 
met  the  brig,  then  just  arrived  and  coming  uj)  the  river  to  find  me. 
She  was  struck  by  lightning  on  the  way  out,  which  occasioned  a  de- 
lay of  about  three  months,  in  consequence  of  which  our  fishing  sea- 
son was  entirely  lost." 

Wyeth  to  Weld  (pp.  148-9)  :  "Wappatoo  Island,  April  3,  1835. 
.  .  .  I  have  had  a  severe  winter  of  it.  All  my  men  have  been 
sick,  except  myself  and  one  man,  and  nothing  but  pure  obstinacy 
has  kept  me  from  being  hauled  up.  This  Wappatoo  Island  which  I 
have  selected  for  our  establishment  is  about  fifteen  miles  long  and 
al)()nt  an  average  of  three  wide.  On  one  side  runs  the  Columbia,  on 
the  other  the  Multnomah.  It  consists  of  woodlands  and  prairie  and 
on  it  there  is  considerable  deer  and  those  who  could  spare  time  to 
hunt  could  live  well,  but  a  mortality  has  carried  off  to  a  man  its 
inhabitants  and  there  is  nothing  to  attest  that  they  ever  existed  ex- 
cept their  decaying  houses,  their  graves  and  their  unburied  bones, 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  325 

of  which  there  are  heaps.  So  you  see,  as  the  righteous  people  of 
New  England  say,  Providence  has  made  room  for  me,  and  without 
doing  them  more  injury  than  I  should  if  I  had  made  room  for  my- 
self, viz.,  by  killing  them  ofif." 

Wyeth  to  F.  Tudor  (pp.  149-50)  :  'Tort  William,  September  6, 
1835.  .  .  .  This  business  has  not  been  successful  in  any  of  its 
branches,  therefore  it  will  terminate  soon.  The  business  I  am  in 
must  be  closed;  not  that  it  might  not  be  made  a  good  one,  but  be- 
cause those  who  are  now  engaged  in  it  are  not  the  men  to  make  it 
so.  The  smallest  loss  makes  them  'fly  the  handle,'  and  such  can 
rarely  succeed  in  a  new  business." 

Wyeth  to  Brown  (pp.  150-51)  :  ''Fort  William,  September  6, 
1835.  .  .  .  We  this  year  put  up  about  half  a  cargo  of  salmon, 
half  a  barrel  of  which  you  will  find  marked  with  your  name;  also 
one  for  my  father,  one  for  my  wife,  for  Leond  Jarvis,  Chas.  Wyeth, 
Leond  I.  Wyeth,  N.  J.  Wyeth  and  Frederic  Tudor.  Any  expense 
please  charge  to  me." 

Wyeth  to  Leo.  Jarvis  (pp.  151-2)  :  "Columbia  River,  September 
20,  1835.  .  .  .  We  have  had  a  bad  season  for  salmon.  About 
half  of  a  cargo  only  obtained.  The  salmon  part  of  the  business  will 
never  do.  I  have  sent  half  a  barrel  to  you,  which  you  will  receive 
through  Mr.  Brown.  I  am  now  a  little  better  from  a  severe  attack 
of  bilious  fever.  I  did  not  expect  to  recover,  and  am  still  a  wreck. 
Our  sick  list  has  been  this  summer  usually  about  one-third  the  whole 
number,  and  the  rest  much  frightened.  Thirteen  deaths  have  oc- 
curred, besides  some  in  the  interior  killed  by  the  Indians.  Some 
property  has  been  lost  also  by  Indians." 

Wyeth  to  Brother  Charles  (pp.  152-3)  :  "Columbia  River,  Sep- 
tember 22,  1835.  .  .  .  Our  salmon  fishing  has  not  succeeded. 
Half  a  cargo  only  obtained.  Our  people  are  sick  and  dying  ofif  like 
rotten  sheep  of  bilious  disorders." 

Wyeth  to  Brother  Leonard  (p.  153)  :  "Columbia  River,  Septem- 
ber 22,  1835.  .  .  .  Salmon  half  a  cargo ;  one-third  of  our  people 
on  the  sick  list  continually;  seventeen  dead  to  this  date  is  the 
amount  of  the  summer.  I  am  but  just  alive  after  having  been  so 
bad  as  to  think  of  writing  up  my  last  letters." 

Wyeth  to  his  wife  (p.  154)  :  "Columbia  River,  September  22, 
1835.  .  .  .  The  season  has  been  very  sickly.  W^e  have  lost  by 
drowning  and  disease  and  warfare  seventeen  persons  to  this  date, 
and  fourteen  now  sick." 

Unless,  therefore.  Gray  and  Spalding,  Barrows,  Craighead,  M. 
Eells,  Coffin,  Mowry,  Nixon,  Penrose,  Geo.  Ludington  Weed  ct  al. 
can  show  that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  controlled  the  lightning  in  the 
Southern  Pacific,  the  course  of  the  salmon  in  the  Northern  Pacific, 
the  malaria  along  the  Columbia  River  Valley,  the  actions  of  the 


326  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

Rocky  Mountain  Fur  Co.  in  breaking  their  contract  with  Wyeth  in 
the  Green  River  Valley,  about  340  miles  east  of  any  fort  they  then 
possessed,  and  the  minds  of  the  eastern  partners  of  Wyeth,  all  their 
accusations  against  that  company  of  having  driven  Wyeth  out  of 
Oregon  are  proven  false. 

That  Wyeth  had  not  the  least  complaint  to  make  of  his  treatment 
has  been  manifest  to  any  one  who  has  been  content  to  look  up  evi- 
dence, instead  of  writing  "history"  from  his  imagination  or  his 
prejudices,  since  1830,  when,  in  ^'Cushing's  Supplemental  Report" 
(No.  101,  Reports  of  Coms.,  H.  of  R.,  25th  Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  Vol.  I.), 
his  "Memoir"  was  printed,  from  which  the  following  extract  shows 
clearly  why  the  TTudson's  Bay  Co.  held  the  trade  of  the  Indians,  and 
states  clearly  how  lie  and  all  other  Americans  were  received  at  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  posts. 

(P.  21)  '^Experience  has  satisfied  me  that  the  entire  weight  of 
this  company  will  be  made  to  bear  on  any  trader  who  shall  attempt 
to  prosecute  his  business  within  its  reach;  in  proof  of  which  is  the 
establishment  of  the  post  at  the  mouth  of  the  Big  Wood  River  (/.  e., 
Fort  Boise),  which  was  done  immediately  after  Fort  Hall  was  built; 
and  the  fact  that  a  party  was  kept  in  the  vicinity  of  Fort  Hall,  with 
an  esj)ecial  view  to  injure  its  trade,  the  whole  time  that  it  remained 
in  the  hands  of  its  projectors.  There  has  never  been  any  successful 
trade  in  this  country  by  the  Americans,  and  it  is  only  by  trapping 
that  they  have  been  able  to  make  any  use  of  it;  and  in  this  they 
are  much  annoyed  by  the  English  traders,  who  follow  them  with 
goods  and  do  not  scruple  to  trade  furs  from  hired  men,  who  they 
are  well  aware  do  not  own  them. 

"I  do  not  wish  to  charge  this  dishonest  practice  to  them  alone, 
nor  do  I  know  that  they  began  it,  for  it  is  common  to  both  parties 
against  the  other,  and  also  between  the  different  parties  of  the 
Americans,  but  it  results  in  the  complete  destruction  of  the  Ameri- 
can trade  and  business  in  the  country.  No  sooner  does  (p.  21)  an 
American  concern  start  in  these  regions  than  one  of  these  trading 
parties  is  put  in  motion,  headed  by  the  clerk  of  the  company,  whose 
zeal  is  stimulated  by  the  prospect  of  an  election  to  a  partnership  in 
it,  fitted  out  with  the  best  assorted  goods  from  their  ample  stores 
and  men  who  have  been  long  in  the  service  of  the  company  and  whose 
wages  of  many  years  are  in  its  hands  as  security  for  their  fidelity. 
TTnder  these  circumstances  we  come  in  contact.  If  there  are  furs 
in  the  hands  of  the  Indians  their  superior  assortment  of  goods  will 
obtain  them.  The  tra])i)ers  who  catch  the  furs  are  mainly  fitted  out 
on  credit  by  the  companies,  and  there  are  too  many  of  them  who  do 
not  scruple  to  avail  of  an  opportunity  to  sell  their  peltries  for  new 
supplies  of  luxuj'ies  or  of  finery,  rather  than  to  pay  their  debts.  In 
this  way  the  American  companies  are  broken  up." 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  327 

(P.  21)  "In  their  personal  intercourse  with  Americans  who  come 
into  the  country  (p.  22)  they  are  uniformly  hospitable  and  kind. 
The  circumstances  under  which  we  meet  them  are  mortifying  in  the 
extreme,  making  us  too  often  but  the  recipients  of  the  bounty  of 
others  instead  of  occupants  to  administer  it,  as  should  be  the  case. 
No  one  who  has  visited  their  posts,  I  presume,  can  say  anything  in 
dispraise  of  his  reception,  and  for  myself,  setting  matters  of  trade 
aside,  I  have  received  the  most  kind  and  considerate  attention  from 
them." 

Wyeth's  "Correspondence  and  Journals"  fully  confirm  this,  as 
witness  the  following: 

Letter  LXVI.,  probably  to  F.  Tudor,  undated  (pp.  52-3)  .  .  . 
"When  I  arrived  at  the  British  posts  my  men,  what  were  then  left, 
being  determined  to  wander  no  more,  I  was  left  to  myself.  In  this 
dilemma  I  was  invited  by  Dr.  J.  McGlaucland  (McLoughlin)  (Gov- 
ernor in  behalf  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  this  country)  to  make 
this  post  my  habitation  until  I  returned.  I  have  been  treated  in  the 
most  hospitable  and  kind  manner  by  all  the  gentlemen  of  this  coun- 
try." 

Letter  LXIX.,  Wyeth  to  Brother  Leonard:  "Fort  Vancouver, 
January  16,  1833  (p.  54).  .  .  This  letter  will  reach  you  by  the 
favor  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  to  whose  agents  in  this  quarter  I 
am  much  indebted  for  assistance  and  information." 

Letter  LXX.,  Wyeth  to  Brother  Charles :  "Fort  Vancouver,  Jan- 
uary 16,  1833  (p.  55).  .  .  This  will  be  short  and  I  hope  sweet.  It 
comes  to  you  by  the  politeness  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  I  have  re- 
ceived all  manner  of  attention  and  assistance  rendered  in  such  a 
way  as  to  make  it  palatable." 

Letter  LXXIL,  Wyeth  to  (fragment  undated,  and  no  address)  : 
(P.  56)  .  .  .  "I  cannot  close  this  without  expressing  to  you  how 
much  I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  Pambrun,  Mr.  Herron  and  Mr.  Herma- 
tinger  (Ermatinger)  for  the  attention  they  have  shown  me." 

Letter  LXXXIIL,  Wyeth  to  McLoughlin:  "Plain  of  the  Three 
Buttes,  July  5,  1833  (p.  68). 

"Dear  Sir :  Having  arrived  at  the  camp  of  Mr.  Bonneville  I  take 
the  liberty  of  writing  you  by  this  last  opportunity  to  express  how 
much  I  am  under  obligation  to  Mr,  Hermatinger  for  the  polite  and 
agreeable  manner  in  which  he  has  dispensed  your  hospitality  to  me 
during  the  whole  route. 

"I  am  here  in  a  direct  train  for  the  States,  and  cannot  without 
some  extraordinary  accident  fail  of  reaching  home  in  October  next. 
Should  you  visit  the  States  I  would  feel  myself  highly  honored  by  a 
visit  or  any  intercourse  which  might  be  agreeable  to  you,  for  which 


328  ACQUISITION    OF   OREGON 

purpose  I  have  enclosed  my  direction.  Should  any  of  your  friends 
visit  the  States  a  letter  would  procure  them  any  attention  which 
may  be  in  my  power.  It  will  be  a  pleasure  to  execute  any  business 
commands  with  which  you  may  entrust  me.  Models  of  American 
agricultural  implements,  seeds  and  other  matters  connected  with 
your  tastes  or  business. 

"Respectfully,  your  obedient  servant, 

"NATHL.  J.  WYETH." 
"To  Doctor  McLaughland  (McLoughlin),  Fort  Vancouver." 

Letter  LXXIX.,  Wyeth  to  Mess.  Editors:  "Cambridge,  Novem- 
ber 11,  1833  (p.  71)).  Having  while  on  a  recent  visit  to  the  Colum- 
bia received  much  attention  and  kindness  from  the  English  traders 
there,  I  deem  it  a  duty  to  express  my  gratitude  for  the  same,  more 
especially  as  T  am  frequently  asked  the  question  if  I  was  ever  mo- 
lested by  them,  liy  all  their  acts  toward  myself  I  am  fully  con- 
vinced that  all  persons  who  from  any  cause  may  come  into  contact 
with  them  will  receive  honorable  and  gentlemanly  treatment.  Among 
the  many  to  whom  I  am  under  obligation  I  wish  to  name  Chief 
Factors  John  McLaughlin  and  Fiulinson  (Finlayson),  Chief  Trader 
Francis  Heron,  Mr.  Francis  Ermatinger  and  Mr.  Pambrun.  Among 
the  American  traders  I  have  received  much  attention  from  Mr.  Mc- 
Kenzie  and  Mr.  Laidlow  of  the  American  Fur  Co.  and  Mr.  Wm.  L. 
Sublette.  To  all  the  above  gentlemen  I  tender  my  thanks. 
"Your  obedient  servant, 

"NATHL.  J.  WYETH." 

Letter  CCXXIIL,  Wyeth  to  Ermatinger:  "Bear  River,  July  5, 
1834  (p.  140).  Your  esteemed  favor  of  the  12th  ulto.  reached  me 
by  the  politeness  of  Mr.  Newell  on  Ham's  Fork  of  Green  River. 
Mr,  N.  also  informed  me  of  the  particulars  of  the  battle  with  the 
Blackfeet.  It  must  have  been  a  capital  mixture  of  wine  and  gun- 
])owder.  I  <im  ha]»py  to  hear  that  you  had  some  success  last  year, 
but  am  afraid  that  you  will  do  but  little  this  season. 

"I  am  quite  hapj)y  to  hear  that  the  doctor  remains  at  Vancouver. 
I  shall  soon  have  the  pleasure  of  seeing  him." 

Turning  now  to  his  journal  (p.  173)  :  "October  14,  1832.  .  . 
Arrived  at  Fort  Walla  Walla  about  5  o'clock  in  the  evening.  I  was 
received  in  the  most  hospitable  and  gentlemanly  manner  by  Pean- 
bron  (Pambrun),  the  agent  for  this  post.  The  fort  is  of  no  strength, 
merely  sufficient  to  frighten  Indians  (pp.  176-7).  October  29,  1832. 
Started  at  10  o'clock  and  arrived  at  the  fort  of  Vancouver  at  12, 
four  miles.  Here  I  was  received  with  the  utmost  kindness  and 
hospitality  by  Dr.  McLauchland  (McLoughlin),  the  acting  Governor 
of  the  [)lnce.     T  find  Dr.  McLauchland  a  fine  old  gentleman,  truly 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  329 

philanthropic  in  his  ideas.  He  is  doing  much  good  by  introducing 
fruits  into  this  country,  which  will  much  facilitate  the  progress  of 
its  settlement  (Indian  corn  3,000  bushels).  The  gentlemen  of  this 
company  do  much  credit  to  their  country  and  concern  by  their  edu- 
cation, deportment  and  talents.  I  find  myself  involved  in  much 
diflBculty  on  account  of  my  men,  some  of  whom  wish  to  leave  me, 
and  whom  the  company  do  not  wish  to  engage  nor  to  have  them  in 
the  country  without  being  attached  to  some  company  able  to  pro- 
tect them,  alleging  that  if  any  of  them  are  killed  they  will  be  obliged 
to  avenge  it  at  any  expense  of  money  and  amicable  relations  with  the 
Indians.  And  it  is  disagreeable  for  me  to  have  men  who  wish  to 
leave  me.  The  company  seem  disposed  to  render  me  all  the  assist- 
ance thej  can.  They  live  well  at  these  posts.  They  have  200  acres 
of  land  under  cultivation ;  the  land  is  of  the  finest  quality." 

(P.  177)  "November  6,  1833.  I  must  here  mention  the  very 
kind,  gentlemanly  conduct  of  Mr.  Jas.  Bernie,  superintendent  of 
Fort  George,  who  assisted  me  to  a  boat  and  pilot  for  the  outer  har- 
bor and  acted  the  part  of  host  to  perfection;"  .  .  .  (and  then, 
without  changing  date)  "I  am  now  afloat  on  the  great  sea  of  life 
without  stay  or  support,  but  in  good  hands,  /.  e,_,  myself  and  Provi- 
dence and  a  few  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  who  are  perfect  gentle- 
men." 

(P.  181)  "31st  to  the  3d  of  February  we  had  warm  and  wet 
weather.  On  the  3d  at  10  o'clock  we  started  for  Walla  Walla.  I 
had  with  me  two  men  and  am  in  company  with  Mr.  Ermatinger  of 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  who  has  in  charge  three  boats  with  120 
pieces  of  goods  and  twenty-nine  men.  I  parted  with  feelings  of  sor- 
row from  the  gentlemen  of  Fort  Vancouver.  Their  unremitted  kind- 
ness to  me  while  there  much  endeared  them  to  me,  more  so  than  it 
would  seem  possible  during  so  short  a  time.  Dr.  McGlaucland  (Mc- 
Loughlin),  the  Governor  of  the  place,  is  a  man  distinguished  as 
much  for  his  kindness  and  humanity  as  his  good  sense  and  informa- 
tion, and  to  whom  I  am  so  much  indebted  as  that  he  will  never  be 
forgotten  by  me." 

(P.  232)  "September  2,  1834.  Then  down  the  Walla  Walla 
River  west  by  north  ten  miles  to  Fort  Walla  Walla,  where  I  found 
Mr.  Pambrun,  who  did  the  honors  of  the  fort  in  his  usual  hand- 
some style." 

(P.  233)  "September  14,  1834.  At  12  o'clock  arrived  at  Fort 
Vancouver,  where  I  found  Dr.  McLaughlin  in  charge,  who  received 
us  in  his  usual  manner.  He  has  here  power,  and  uses  it  as  a  man 
should  to  make  those  about  him  and  those  who  come  in  contact  with 
him  comfortable  and  happy." 

(P.  250)  "February  12,  1835.  In  the  morning  made  to  Van- 
couver and  found  there  a  polite  reception  and  to  my  great  astonish- 


330  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

ment  Mr.  Hall  J.  Kelley.  He  came  in  company  with  Mr.  Young 
from  Monte  El  Key  (/.  e.^  Monterey,  Cal.)  It  is  said  stole  between 
them  a  bunch  of  horses.  Kelley  is  not  received  at  the  fort  on  this 
account  as  a  gentleman.  A  house  is  given  him  and  food  sent  him 
from  the  Governor's  table,  but  he  is  not  suffered  to  mess  here." 

(P.  251)  "February  2'S,  1835,  I  arrived  at  Vancouver  in  the 
morning  23d  February  and  met  a  reception  such  as  one  loves  to 
find  in  such  a  country  as  this." 

Finally  in  a  letter  to  J.  G.  Palfrey,  M.  C.  from  Massachusetts, 
dated  Cambridge,  December  13,  1847  (i.  c,  eighteen  months  after 
the  treaty  fixing  the  boundary  at  49  degrees),  urging  that  his  claims 
to  Fort  William  and  Wappatoo  Island  should  be  recognized  in  the 
bill  for  organizing  Oregon  Territory,  Wyeth  enclosed  a  long  state- 
ment of  his  work  in  beginning  the  American  settlement  of  Oregon 
by  his  two  expeditions  thither. 

In  this  statement  there  is  not  one  word  of  criticism  of  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.,  nor  the  least  intimation  that  it  was  in  any  way  re- 
sponsible for  his  abandoning  his  Oregon  business;  but  (Idem,  p. 
255)  there  is  the  following  straightforward  statement  of  why  he 
abandoned  the  country,  while  its  concluding  sentence  shows  the 
friendly  relations  subsisting  between  him  and  Dr.  McLoughlin. 

"During  the  winter  of  1830  I  resided  at  my  post  of  Fort  Hall, 
and  in  the  spring  of  that  year  returned  to  Fort  William  of  Wap- 
patoo Island,  whence  I  carried  more  supplies  to  Fort  Hall,  arriving 
there  the  18th  of  June,  and  on  the  25th  left  for  the  United  States 
by  way  of  Taos  and  the  Arkansas  River  and  arrived  home  early  in 
the  autumn  of  1830.  The  commercial  distress  of  that  time  pre- 
cluded the  further  prosecution  of  our  enterprise,  that  so  far  had 
yielded  little  but  misfortunes.  It  remained  only  to  close  the  active 
business,  which  was  done  by  paying  every  debt,  and  returning  every 
man  who  desired  to  the  place  whence  he  was  taken,  and  disi)osing 
of  the  ]»ropei-ty  to  the  best  advantage.  All  the  pro])erty  in  the  in- 
terior, including  Fort  Hall,  was  sold,  it  being  necessary  in  order  to 
retain  that  post  to  keep  up  a  garrison  for  its  defense  against  the 
Indians  and  to  forward  annual  supplies  to  it,  an  operation  at  that 
time  beyond  our  means.  Fort  William  at  Wappatoo  Island,  requir- 
ing nothing  of  that  kind,  was  retained,  and  the  gentleman  then  in 
charge  of  it,  Mr.  C.  M.  Walker,  was  directed  to  lease  it  to  some 
trusty  person  for  fifteen  years  unless  sooner  reclaimed.  Nothing 
having  been  heard  from  Mr.  Walker  for  a  long  time,  T  sent  a  request 
to  John  McLaughlin  Esq.  for  the  same  purpose,  and  also  to  have 
the  island  entered  in  my  name  at  the  land  office  established  by  the 
provisional  government." 

As  Wyelh  was  the  only  American  who  ever  founded  a  fur  trad- 
ing post  in  the  Oregon  Territory  between  1813  and  1840  (for  Fort 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  331 

Bridger  was  south  of  42  degrees  and  so  in  Mexican  Territory),  it 
has  seemed  to  me  advisable  to  treat  of  Mr.  Wyeth's  experience  very 
fully,  since  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Legend  have  so  persist- 
ently held  him  up  to  view  as  the  chief  victim  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.'s  oppression  of  American  fur  traders. 

The  first  American  missionaries  to  Oregon  were  the  Methodists, 
Revs.  Jason  and  Daniel  Lee,  and  Cyrus  Shepard,  P.  L.  Edwards 
and  C.  M.  Walker,  laymen,  who  went  overland  in  N.  J.  Wyeth's 
1834  party. 

September  14,  1834,  Rev.  J.  Lee,  narrating  their  arrival  at  Fort 
Vancouver,  wrote:  "When  we  landed  the  Governor  (i.  e.,  Dr. 
McLoughlin)  and  gentlemen  of  the  fort  were  on  shore  awaiting  our 
arrival,  and  received  us  and  conducted  us  to  the  fort.  The  polite 
attentions  we  received  from  these  gentlemen  caused  us  almost  to 
think  we  were  in  our  own  native  land."  (Neic  York  Christian  Advo- 
cate and  Zion's  Herald,  October  30,  1835.) 

{Idem,  November  13,  1835.)  In  a  letter  from  Cyrus  Shepard, 
dated  Fort  Vancouver,  January  16,  1835.  "On  our  arrival  we  were 
received  in  the  most  friendly  manner  by  the  Governor  and  gentle- 
men of  the  fort,  who  till  the  present  time  have  remained  sincere 
friends  to  us  and  to  the  cause  in  which  we  are  engaged." 

(Idem,,  September  2,  1836.)  In  a  letter  from  Jason  Lee,  dated 
Mission  House,  Willamette  River,  March  14,  1836,  he  copies  a  very 
friendly  letter  from  Dr.  McLoughlin,  enclosing  a  subscription  list 
of  the  gentlemen  of  the  company  at  Fort  Vancouver,  aggregating 
£26,  for  the  use  of  this  American  Methodist  Mission. 

No  one  of  these  men  was  a  Methodist,  so  that  there  was  no 
church  obligation  impelling  them  to  subscribe. 

McLoughlin  was  a  Catholic,  and  he  headed  the  list  with  £6,  and 
the  rest  were  either  Presbyterians,  Episcopalians  or  Catholics. 

Rev.  D.  Lee  and  Rev,  J.  H.  Frost  (who  went  out  with  the  great 
reinforcement  to  this  mission  in  1840)  published  in  1844,  in  New 
York,  a  book  entitled  "Ten  Years  in  Oregon,"  and  there  are  numer- 
ous passages  in  it  which  show  that  this  kind  treatment  of  these 
Methodist  missionaries  continued  during  the  whole  nine  years  of 
Mr.  Lee's  stay  in  Oregon. 

(P.  225)  Lee  and  Frost.  As  to  the  reception  of  the  great  re- 
inforcement to  the  Methodist  Mission,  consisting  of  fifty-two  per- 
sons, which  arrived  at  Fort  Vancouver  June  1,  1840 : 

"Dr.  McLoughlin  came  on  board,  and  was  introduced  to  the  mis- 
sion family,  and  gave  them  a  very  kind  invitation  to  partake  of  the 
hospitalities  of  the  fort.  .  .  On  the  following  day  all  were  com- 
fortably roomed  in  the  fort,  and  nothing  was  lacking  on  the  part 


332  ACQVI^ITIOy    OF    OREGON 

of  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  of  the  establishment  to  render  our  so- 
journ comfortable  and  pleasant." 

(Idem,  p.  265)  On  August  13,  1843,  when  ready  to  embark  for 
the  United  States,  Mr.  Lee  writes  this  of  their  reception  and  treat- 
ment by  Mr.  Birnie,  in  charge  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  post  at 
Fort  George  (or  Astoria)  :  '^While  we  were  here  the  kind  hospi- 
talities of  Mr.  James  Birnie's  house  were  very  generously  served  up 
for  our  entertainment." 

For  other  passages  in  this  book  stating  similar  acts  of  kindness 
by  Mr.  Pambrun  at  Walla  Walla,  Dr.  McLoughlin  at  Vancouver  and 
Mr.  Birnie  at  Astoria  and  of  the  captain  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s 
ship  Cadhoro,  Cf.  pp.  123,  12(5,  134,  213,  222,  223,  224,  225,  226, 
281,  327. 

Another  of  these  Methodist  missionaries  who  was  one  of  the 
great  reinforcement  in  1840  was  Rev.  Gustavus  Hines,  who  re- 
mained till  after  the  mission  was  broken  up  in  1844,  and  in  1851 
he  i)ublislied  a  ''History  of  Oregon"  in  New  York.  It  contains 
abundance  of  statements  of  the  great  kindness  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.'s  ofiicers  through  all  those  years. 

Four  brief  extracts  must  suffice  for  Hines. 

(P.  90)  Relating  the  arrival  of  the  great  reinforcement  of  tifty- 
tv\'0  persons  in  the  ship  Lausanne,  on  June  1,  1840,  at  Fort  Van- 
couver, Mr.  Hines  says:  "Dr.  John  McLoughlin,  the  superintend- 
ent of  the  company's  affairs — though  a  Catholic*  himself — received 
us  with  much  cordiality,  and  extended  to  us  the  hospitalities  of  the 
])lace  so  long  as  we  should  find  it  convenient  to  remain."  And  the 
whole  fifty-two  of  them  did  remain  without  any  charge  for  their 
entertainment  till  they  were  sent  to  their  several  destinations. 

(Idem,  p.  120)  "December  8,  1840.  Arrived  at  Vancouver  at  2 
p.  m.  I  was  received  with  all  that  courtesy  and  hospitality  which 
usually  characterize  the  gentlemen  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co." 

{Idem,  ]).  245)  Reception  at  Fort  Vancouver,  August  20,  1845. 
This  was  after  the  election  of  James  K.  Polk  to  the  Presidency  on 
the  "fifty-four,  forty  or  fight"  ])latform,  when,  if  ever,  it  might  be 

*  Many  erroneous  statements  have  been  made  about  Dr.  McLoughlin's 
religious  convictions  and  affiliations.  In  1878  there  were  published  in  Port- 
land, Ore.,  in  the  Catholic  Rentineh  "Historical  Sketches  of  the  Catholic 
Church  in  Oregon  During  the  Past  Forty  Years"  (1838-1878).  Their  author 
was  the  first  Archbishop  of  Oregon,  Rev.  Francis  Norbert  Blanchet,  D.  D. 
In  giving  a  sketch  of  Dr.  .John  McLoughlin's  life,  Father  Blanchet  said:  "Dr. 
McLoughlin  was  the  arbiter  to  whom  both  whites  and  Indians  looked  for  the 
settlement  of  their  differences  and  the  friend  from  whom  they  sought  relief 
in  all  their  difficulties.  His  ashes  rest  beneath  the  shadow  of  the  Cathedral 
cross  of  Oregon  City,  where  he  died  in  April,  1857.  He  was  originally  a 
member  of  the  Anglican  church,  but  was  converted  by  Archbishop  Blanchet  in 
1842,  and  was  ever  afterwards  a  most  exemplary  Catholic.  May  his  soul  rest 
in  peace."     This  should  be  accepted  as  conclusive. — C.  B.  Bahley. 


ACQUISITION   OF    OREGON  333 

supposed  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  would  be  extremely  antagonistic  to 
all  Americans,  but  this  is  Mr.  Hines'  report: 

''Next  morning  went  up  to  the  fort  to  complete  our  prepara- 
tions for  sea;  were  very  kindly  received  by  James  Douglas,  Esq., 
who,  by  his  friendly  attentions  and  acts  of  benevolence,  paved  the 
way  to  render  our  voyage  much  more  agreeable  than  it  otherwise 
would  have  been." 

(Idem,  p.  389)  "Few  persons,  whether  coming  by  land  or  by 
sea,  have  ever  visited  Vancouver  without  being  received  with  a  hos- 
pitality which  knew  no  bounds,  until  every  want  of  the  traveler 
was  supplied.  Innumerable  have  been  the  favors  conferred  by  them 
upon  the  American  missionaries,  and  their  assistance  has  been 
rendered  at  times  when  great  inconvenience  and  even  suffering 
would  have  resulted  from  neglect." 

{Idem,  p.  149)  April  28,  1843.  Mr.  Hines  gives  the  following 
account  of  his  reception  at  Fort  Vancouver,  on  the  way  to  the  up- 
per Columbia  with  Dr.  E.  White  (U.  S.  sub-Indian  Agent  for  the 
Oregon  Indians,  and  organizer  of  the  first  migration  from  the 
States  to  Oregon,  that  of  1842)  : 

"Called  on  Dr.  McLoughlin  for  goods,  provisions,  powder,  balls, 
etc.,  for  our  accommodation  on  our  voyage  up  the  Columbia,  and 
though  he  was  greatly  surprised  that,  under  the  circumstances,  we 
should  think  of  going  among  those  excited  Indians,  yet  he  ordered 
his  clerks  to  let  us  have  whatever  we  wanted.  However,  we  found 
it  rather  squally  at  the  fort,  not  so  much  on  account  of  our  going 
among  the  Indians  of  the  interior,  as  in  consequence  of  a  certain 
memorial  having  been  sent  to  the  United  States  Congress  implicat- 
ing the  conduct  of  Dr.  McLoughlin  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  and 
bearing  the  signatures  of  seventy  Americans.  I  inquired  of  the 
doctor  if  he  had  refused  to  grant  supplies  to  those  Americans  who 
had  signed  that  document;  he  replied  that  he  had  not,  but  that  the 
authors  of  the  memorial  need  expect  no  more  favors  from  him.  Not 
being  one  of  the  authors,  but  merely  a  signer  of  the  petition,  I  did 
not  come  under  the  ban  of  the  company;  consequently  I  obtained 
my  outfit  for  the  expedition,  though  at  first  there  were  strong  indi- 
cations that  I  would  be  refused.  We  remained  at  the  fort  over  night 
and  part  of  the  next  day,  and  after  a  close  conversation  with  the 
gentleman  in  command"  {i.  e.,  McLoughlin)  "were  treated  with 
great  courtesy." 

This  memorial  to  Congress  we  will  consider  later. 

This  expedition  was  in  connection  with  certain  reports  of  In- 
dian disturbances,  and  as  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Legend, 
quoting  a  single  sentence  from  this  chapter,  entirely  disconnected 
from  its  context,  and  without  comparison   with  other  contempo- 


334  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

mneoiis  docmnents,  have  claimed  that  it  furnishes  strictly  con- 
temporary proof  that  it  was  generally  understood  in  Oregon  in  the 
spring  of  1843  that  Whitman's  ride  was  to  save  Oregon,  and  as, 
when  so  compared,  it  is  shown  to  prove  nothing  of  the  kind,  but  to 
show  the  kindness  of  both  McLoughlin  and  McKinlay  toward  Amer- 
icans, we  will  examine  it  at  this  point. 

The  sentence  they  quote  is  as  follows:  (p.  143)  "The  arrival 
of  a  large  i>arty  of  emigrants"  {i.  e.,  Dr.  White's  party)  "about  this 
time,  and  the  sudden  departure  of  Dr.  Whitman  to  the  United 
States,  with  the  avowed  intention  of  bringing  back  with  him  as 
many  as  he  could  enlist  for  Oregon,"  etc.  (Cf.  articles  in  reply  to 
Prof.  Bourne's  "The  Whitman  Legend,"  by  Rev.  S.  B.  L.  Penrose, 
President  of  \\'hitman  College,  widely  printed  in  newspapers  in 
January,  1901 ;  by  W^.  A.  Mowry  in  Boston  Transcript,  near  April 
12,  1001 ;  W.  A.  Mowry  and  M.  Eells,  S.  8.  Times,  November  15, 
1902;  and  M.  Eells'  "Reply  to  Prof.  Bourne,"  p.  6G.) 

At  first  sight  it  does  look  as  if  here  was  a  statement  that  gives 
some  sui>port  to  the  claim  that  the  ^'Saving  Oregon"  theory  of 
Whitman's  ride  was  known  in  Oregon  in  the  winter  of  1842-3,  and 
indorsed  by  Dines  as  early  as  1845-0  (when  it  is  supposed  his  book 
was  written),  and  if  it  were  not  for  those — to  the  advocates  of 
myths — most  vexatious  things  known  as  "contexts"  and  "other  con- 
temporaneous documents"  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman  myth 
might  claim  that  they  had  at  last  produced  one  little  bit  of  evi- 
dence of  some  value  on  the  single  point  of  the  publication  of  the 
myth  earlier  than  18G4-1865,  though  as  Hines  had  no  connection 
with  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  mission,  and  knew  nothing  of  the  dissensions 
of  that  mission,  and  the  destructive  order  of  the  Board  which 
caused  AA'hitman's  ride,  even  if  he  had  published  a  "Saving  Oregon" 
theory  of  it,  that  could  not  be  accepted  as  proving  that  theory  to 
be  true,  but  only  that  he — an  outsider — had  heard  such  a  theory 
for  it  before  he  left  Oregon. 

But  let  us  examine  the  context,  and  also  two  letters  of  Mrs. 
Whitman  to  her  husband,  the  first  dated  March  29,  1843  (which 
letter  is  No.  103,  Vol.  138,  of  the  Am.  Bd.  Mss.),  and  the  second 
dated  April  14,  1843,  Transactions  Oregon  Pioneer  Assn.,  1893,  pp. 
100-102).  The  passage  from  Dines  (pp.  142-3)  relates  to  the  rumors 
of  the  hostile  intentions  toward  the  whites  on  the  part  of  the  Cayuse, 
Nez  Perces  and  Walla  Walla  Indians. 

In  an  endeavor  to  x)acify  those  excited  Indians,  Dr.  White,  the 
Indian  Agent,  and  Mr.  Dines  left  the  Willamette  settlement  for  a 
journey  of  some  300  miles  up  the  Columbia,  and  at  The  Dalles  were 
joined  by  Rev.  H.  K.  W.  Perkins,  and  under  date  of  May  9,  1843, 
Dines  (after  stating  that  they  reached  Whitman's  mission  at  5 
that  afternoon)  goes  on:     (p.  104)     "When  the  Indians  were  first 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  335 

told  that  the  Americans  were  designing  to  subjugate  them  and  take 
away  their  lands,  the  young  chiefs  of  the  Kayuse  tribe  were  in  favor 
of  proceeding  immediately  to  hostilities.  They  were  for  raising  a 
large  war  party  and,  rushing  directly  down  to  the  Willamette  set- 
tlement, cut  off  the  inhabitants  at  a  blow.  The  old  chiefs  were  of 
a  different  opinion ;  they  suggested  more  cautious  measures.  Tak- 
ing into  consideration  the  diflficulty,  at  that  season  of  the  year,  of 
marching  a  large  party  the  distance  of  three  or  four  hundred  miles 
through  a  wide  range  of  mountains  covered  with  snow,  they  ad- 
vised all  the  Indians  to  wait  until  they  should  obtain  more  infor- 
mation concerning  the  designs  of  the  Americans.  They  also  thought 
it  would  not  be  wisdom  in  them,  in  any  case,  to  commence  an 
offensive  war,  but  to  prepare  themselves  for  a  vigorous  defense 
against  any  attack.  They  frequently  remarked  to  Mr.  Geiger  that 
they  did  not  wish  to  go  to  war,  but  if  the  Americans  came  to  take 
away  their  lands,  and  bring  them  into  a  state  of  vassalage,  they 
would  fight  so  long  as  they  had  a  drop  (p.  165)  of  blood  to  shed. 
They  said  they  had  received  their  information  concerning  the  de- 
signs of  the  Americans  from  Baptiste  Dorio.  This  individual,  who 
is  a  half-breed  son  of  Madame  Dorio,  the  heroine  of  Washington 
Irving's  "Astoria,"  understands  the  Nez  Perces  language  well,  and 
had  given  the  Kayuses  the  information  that  had  alarmed  them.  Mr. 
Geiger  endeavored  to  induce  them  to  prepare,  early  in  the  spring,  to 
cultivate  the  ground  as  they  did  the  year  before,  but  they  refused  to 
do  anything,  saying  that  Baptiste  Dorio  had  told  them  that  it  would 
be  of  no  consequence;  that  the  whites  would  come  in  the  summer 
and  kill  them  all  off  and  destroy  their  plantations. 

"After  Dorio  had  told  them  this  story,  they  sent  a  Walla  Walla 
chief  called  Yellow  Serpent  to  Vancouver,  to  learn  from  Dr.  Mc- 
Loughlin  the  facts  in  the  case.  Yellow  Serpent  returned  and  told 
the  Kayuses  that  Dr.  McLoughlin  said  he  had  nothing  to  do  in  a 
war  with  the  Indians ;  that  he  did  not  believe  the  Americans  de- 
signed to  attack  them,  and  that,  if  the  Americans  did  go  to  war  with 
the  Indians,  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  would  not  assist  them.  After 
they  got  this  information  from  the  bias  (great)  doctor,  the  Indians 
became  more  calm,  many  of  them  went  to  cultivating  the  ground 
as  formerly  and  a  large  number  of  little  patches  had  been  planted 
and  sown  before  we  arrived  at  the  station." 

Mrs.  Whitman's  letter  of  March  29,  1843  (never  yet  published) 
was  written  from  Waskopum  (?.  e.,  the  Methodist  missionary  station 
at  The  Dalles,  where  Rev.  H.  K.  W.  Perkins  was  located).  It  was 
directed  on  the  outside  to  "Dr.  M.  Whitman,  or  Rev.  D.  Greene," 
and  indorsed  as  "Received  August  9,  acted  to  Dr.  Whitman,  April 
12,  D.  G." 


336  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

It  covers  fourteen  pages.  The  first  two  pages  of  this  letter  are 
mostly  filled  with  the  excitement  among  the  Cayiise  (or  Kaiiise) 
Indians,  caused  by  Dr.  White's  folly  in  November,  1842,  in  attempt- 
ing to  force  them  to  adopt  the  code  of  laws  which  had  been  adopted 
by  the  Xez  Perces. 

On  p.  3  she  wrote:  ''Mr.  Geiger  writes  me  that  'the  Indians  are 
constantly  talking  about  going  to  war  with  the  Americans  and  will 
not  believe  anything  else  but  that  you  have  gone  for  men  to  fight 
them.'  This  last  is  the  most  trying  to  me  of  all  the  rest.  This  orig- 
inated, I  am  sorry  to  say,  from  some  remarks  which,  as  the  Indians 
tell  me,  Mr.  Spalding  made  while  at  the  station  last  fall.  They 
never  have  heard  a  lisp  from  me  of  the  object  of  your  visit  to  the 
States,  no  more  than  you  told  them  before  you  left,  and  one  would 
think  they  had  seen  enough  of  you  to  know  you  had  not  the  least 
desire  of  that  kind  toward  them." 

Turning  to  ^Irs.  Whitman's  letter  of  April  14,  1843,  we  find  the 
following  (after  the  statement  that  she  had  left  the  Methodist 
Mission  at  The  Dalles  on  Monday,  April  3,  and  reached  Walla  Walla 
Saturday,  April  8)  :  "The  excitement  among  the  Kaiuses  has 
abated  considerably  from  what  it  was  when  I  commenced  fhis  let- 
ter. Mr.  McKinlay  of  this  fort  has  been  to  Vancouver  and  brought 
back  word  to  them  from  Dr.  McLoughlin  that  they,  the  British,  do 
not,  neither  have  they  intended  to  make  war  upon  them.  This  re- 
lieves them  considerably.  Now  their  fear  is  the  Americans.  They 
have  been  led  to  believe  that  deceitful  measures  are  being  taken  to 
rob  them  of  their  land,  to  kill  them  all  off.  Language  like  this  has 
been  told  them,  and  at  the  meeting  last  fall,  'that  if  you  do  not  make 
laws  and  f)rotect  the  whites  and  their  property,  we  will  put  you  in 
the  way  of  doing  it.'  They  consider  this  a  declaration  to  figlit  and 
they  have  i)re]>ared  accordingly.  We  hope  no  depredations  will  be 
committed  upon  us  or  the  mission  property,  and  think  the  difficulties 
can  be  removed  and  adjusted  to  tlieir  minds,  but  not  without  the 
most  pi-udent  and  wise  measui-es.  The  agent  ( /.  e..  Dr.  White. — W.  I. 
M.)  is  quite  ignorant  of  Indian  character,  and  especially  of  the 
character  of  the  Kaiuses.  Husband's  presence  is  needed  very  much 
at  this  juncture.  A  great  loss  is  sustained  by  his  going  to  the 
States.  I  mean  a  present  loss  to  the  station  and  to  the  Indians, 
and  hope  and  expect  a  greater  good  will  be  accomplished  by  it. 
There  was  no  other  way  for  us  to  do.  We  felt  that  we  could  not 
remain,  as  we  were  without  more  help,  and  we  are  so  far  off  that 
to  send  by  letter  and  get  retui'ns  was  too  slow  a  way  for  the  ])res- 
ent  emergency." 

So  it  appears  that  Mr.  Hines  did  not  hear  that  Whitman  had 
gone  east  to  save  Oregon  in  1843,  but  that  he  had  gone  east,  accord- 
ing to  the  Indians,  to  bring  out  soldiers  to  fight  and  conquer  the 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  337 

Indians  and  to  settle  the  Nez  Perces  country,  i.  c,  where  Spalding's 
mission  station  was  situated. 

As  these  Indians  were  exceedingly  jealous  of  any  settlement  of 
whites  in  their  country,  this,  combined  with  some  wild  talk  of  Spald- 
ing's that  Whitman  had  gone  for  soldiers  to  fight  them  and  the 
unwisdom  of  Dr.  White,  the  Indian  Agent,  in  forcing  laws  upon 
them  in  the  autumn  of  1842,  soon  after  Whitman  started  for  the 
States  (which  were  assigned  by  Mrs.  Whitman  in  her  two  letters 
of  March  29  and  April  14,  1843  as  the  real  causes  of  the  excite- 
ment among  the  Indians)  gives  a  perfectly  reasonable  ground 
for  this  excitement,  with  which  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  had 
nothing  whatever  to  do,  except  that  when  the  Indians  turned  to 
their  long-time  friends,  McKinlay  and  McLoughlin,  for  advice,  they 
received  from  them  precisely  the  advice  best  adapted  to  calm  them 
and  end  the  warlike  excitement  among  them,  as  is  testified  to  both 
by  Hines  in  the  passage  quoted  from  his  page,  165,  and  also  by  Mrs. 
Whitman  in  hers  of  April  14,  1843. 

While  all  that  Mr.  Hines  writes  of  his  own  personal  experience 
and  that  of  his  associates  in  the  Methodist  mission  is  entirely  fa- 
vorable to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  yet  when  he  came  to  write  his  book 
in  the  States  in  1845-6,  when  the  "fifty-four  forty  or  fight"  craze 
was  rampant  among  a  large  part  of  the  Democratic  politicians,  he 
could  not  resist  the  temptation  to  add  to  the  popularity  of  his  book 
by  the  following  attack  on  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  (pp.  386-8)  : 

"Another  feature  of  the  policy  of  the  company  is  the  course 
which  they  have  pursued  in  relation  to  colonizing  the  country.  They 
have  always  been  opposed  to  its  settlement  by  any  people  except 
such  as,  by  a  strict  subjection  to  the  company,  would  become  sub- 
servient to  their  wishes.  This  has,  doubtless,  arisen  from  two  cir- 
cumstances: First,  the  fur  trade  of  Oregon  has  been  rapidly  de- 
clining for  a  number  of  years  past,  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  are 
fully  aware  that  this  trade  alone  will  not  be  sufficient  to  sustain 
them  in  the  country  for  many  years  to  come,  and  to  abandon  the 
country  would  involve  themselves  in  an  immense  loss.  These  lia- 
bilities they  wish  to  guard  against  by  opening  sources  of  wealth  in 
other  branches  of  business,  to  be  under  their  control. 

"Secondly,  they  have  had  in  their  employment,  every  year,  many 
hundreds  of  persons,  consisting  of  Canadian  French,  Hawaiians, 
half-breed  Iroquois,  and  others,  who  are  under  their  absolute  con- 
trol so  long  as  they  remain  in  the  Indian  country.  Many  of  these, 
from  year  to  year,  either  by  having  large  families,  by  the  decline  of 
the  fur  trade,  or  by  superannuation,  become  unprofitable  servants, 
and  by  the  company  are  settled  in  various  parts  of  the  country, 
where  they  support  themselves,  and  become,  indirectly,  a  source  of 
profit  to  the  company.    They  wished  to  preserve  Oregon  as  an  asy- 


338  ACQUrSITION    OF    OREGOX 

lum  for  their  servants,  on  both  sides  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  where 
they  conld  nse  them  to  advantage  in  agricultural,  pastoral  and  man- 
ufacturing jHirsuits,  when  they  could  be  no  longer  serviceable  to 
lluMii  in  (lie  business  of  the  fur  ti-ade.  That  the  com])any  have  con- 
tempialed  a  lapid  «lecline,  and  probable  termination  of  the  fur  trade, 
west  of  the  Kocky  Mountains,  appears  from  the  fact  of  their  having 
been  foi-med  into  a  new  com])any,  under  the  name  of  *l*uget's  Sound 
Agricultural  ('om]»any,'  with  a  capital  of  £2,0()0,()(M).  This  company 
has  pretended  to  hold  lai-ge  tracts  of  land  in  the  vicinity  of  I'uget's 
Sound,  under  grants  of  letters  patent  from  the  English  (lovernment; 
and  here  they  have  attempted  to  establish  a  colony,  but  without 
success. 

"This  atfcuii*!  was  made  in  1S42.  The  half-breed  descendants  of 
the  gentlemen  and  servants  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  had  been  col- 
lecting together  in  a  colony  on  a  small  tract  of  fertile  land,  lying 
on  Ked  Kiver,  east  of  the  Kocky  Mountains,  for  more  than  thirty 
years,  and  so  rapid  was  the  increase  of  the  colony,  and  so  limited 
the  arable  country  of  the  Red  River,  that  the  company  resolved  to 
send  off  a  colony  of  the  numerous  Scotch  and  English  half-breeds 
settled  on  that  river  to  the  shores  of  the  Pacific  Ocean.  Accord- 
ingly, in  1842,  Sir  (leorge  Simpson,  who  for  man\'  years  has  been 
the  resident  Governor  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  by  holding  out  the 
most  flattering  inducements,  succeeded  in  forming  a  colony  of  some 
thirty  families,  of  which  he  took  the  charge  in  ])erson.  They  left 
the  Ked  Kiver  Settlement  late  in  the  spring,  with  theii-  scanty  sup- 
plies packed  upon  the  backs  of  mules  and  Indian  ponies,  and  passing 
through  the  stupendous  gates  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  they  arrived 
on  the  boi-ders  of  Puget's  Sound  some  time  in  the  month  of  October. 
If  the  fertility  of  the  soil,  where  they  were  planted  by  Sir  (ieorge, 
had  corresponded  with  the  picturesque  beauty  of  the  face  of  the 
country,  doubtless  the  colony  would  have  succeeded;  but,  in  conse- 
quence of  a  total  failure  of  the  crops  the  first  year,  the  colonists 
abandoned  the  ]»lace,  contrary  to  the  wishes  of  the  company,  and 
settled  in  a  more  fertile  portion  of  the  country. 

"Two  other  settlements  intended  for  the  reception  and  sup])ort 
of  retiring  sei-vants  of  the  company  have  been  established  in  Oregon  ; 
one  in  the  valley  of  the  Cowlitz,  north  of  the  lower  Columbia,  the 
othei-  on  the  delightful  plains  watered  by  the  Willamette  River, 
south  of  the  Columbia.  As  interested  motives  first  induced  the  cora- 
I)any  to  establish  these  settlements,  so  it  has  always  been  their 
policy  to  keep  them  in  a  state  of  absolute  dependence.  The  colon- 
ists have  not  only  been  responsible  to  the  company  for  the  course 
of  conduct  they  have  y)ursued,  but  from  it  alone,  until  very  recently, 
they  have  been  obliged  to  receive  all  their  sui)])lies  of  foreign  neces- 
saries, consisting  of  clothing,  groceries,  etc.,  for  which  they  have 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  339 

been  obliged  to  pay  in  the  produce  of  the  soil,  at  prices  to  suit  the 
avaricious  propensities  which  have  developed  themselves  in  the 
whole  policy  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 

"The  oppressive  measures  adopted  by  the  company,  in  reference 
to  these  settlements,  were  such  as  to  cause  them  to  languish  for 
years,  and  to  induce  some  of  the  most  active  and  enterprising 
among  the  settlers  to  take  refuge  in  the  United  States." 

On  this  it  is  only  needful  to  remark : 

First.  The  contemporary  evidence  in  this  chapter  demonstrates 
beyond  any  question  the  total  falsity  of  his  opening  statement  that 
the  "Hudson's  Bay  Co.  have  always  been  opposed,  etc." 

Second.  Instead  of  "many"  of  these  discharged  employes  being 
settled  by  the  company  in  various  parts  of  the  country,  the  total 
number  so  settled  in  Oregon  up  to  the  autumn  of  1843  was  only 
fifty,  or  less  than  an  average  of  two  a  year  for  the  whole  time  since 
the  North  West  Co.  acquired  Astoria.  The  "Copy  of  a  Document" 
(cf.  pp.  429-439  infra)  shows  how  wise  were  the  regulations  under 
which  McLoughlin  began  the  colonization  of  Oregon. 

Third.  As  a  British  corporation,  it  was  the  patriotic  duty  of 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  by  all  honorable  means  to  endeavor  to  secure 
as  much  of  Oregon  as  possible  for  Great  Britain,  precisely  as  it  was 
of  Americans  to  secure  as  much  as  possible  for  the  United  States. 

Fourth.  There  is  the  most  unanswerable  evidence  in  the  diplo- 
matic papers  and  the  debates  in  Congress  and  in  the  "Copy  of  a 
Document"  (pp.  429-439  infra)  that  it  was  perfectly  understood  by 
both  Governments  after  1824  that  "in  no  event  could  the  British 
claim  extend  south  of  the  Columbia  River." 

Fifth.  The  Puget's  Sound  Agricultural  Co.  was  not  formed  to 
hold  Oregon,  since  nothing  done  while  the  treaties  of  1818  and  1827 
remained  in  force  could  effect  that,  but  to  separate  the  agricultural 
and  stock  raising  business  of  the  company,  as  it  became  extensive, 
from  the  fur  trade,  which  was  that  for  which  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
had  its  exclusive  license. 

Sixth.  Instead  of  having  a  capital  of  £2,000,000,  the  capital 
stock  of  the  Puget's  Sound  Agricultural  Co.  was  only  £200,000,  of 
which  only  £20,000  was  ever  paid  up,  and  on  this  the  total  divi- 
dends up  to  the  payment  made  to  the  company  of  $200,000  by  the 
United  States  on  September  10,  1869,  were  only  55%,  equal  to 
£11,000.  (Cf.  pp.  113,  124  and  149  of  the  evidence  for  the  Puget's 
Sound  Agricultural  Co.,  being  Vol.  II.  of  the  Report  of  the  Cases 
of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  Puget's  Sound  Agricultural  Co.  vs. 
the  United  States.) 

Seventh.  Neither  "in  the  vicinity  of  Puget's  Sound"  nor  any- 
where else  in  the  Oregon  Territorv  south  of  49  degrees  did  either 


340  ACQULSITIOX    OF    OREGON 

the  Puj2;et's  Sound  Agricultural  Co.  or  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  ever, 
for  one  instant,  pretend  to  hold  "large  tracts  of  land,"  or  so  much 
as  one  acre  of  land  "under  grants  of  letters  patent  from  the  English 
(}<)V(M-nnient." 

Neither  Creat  liritain  nor  the  United  States  had  any  right, 
while  the  treaties  of  1818  and  1827  remained  in  force,  to  grant  any 
land  in  any  i)art  of  Oregon,  and  neither  Government  did  make  any 
such  grants  to  any  i)erson  or  corporation  till  alter  the  treaty  of 
1840  had  given  the  United  States  the  right  to  make  such  grants 
south  of  4!>  degrees,  and  Great  Britain  the  right  to  make  such  grants 
north  of  40  degrees. 

I'lighth.  Mr.  Iliiies  is  entirely  mistaken  about  (a)  "a  small  tract 
of  fertile  land  on  Ked  Kiver";  (bj  '"the  rapid  increase  of  that  col- 
ony"; (c)  "the  limited  area  of  the  arable  country  on  the  Red  River"; 
(d)  that  the  comi)any  sent  off  a  colony  from  the  Red  River  to  Ore- 
gon in  1842;  (e)  that  the  colony  contained  "some  thirty  families"; 
(f)  that  Sir  George  Simpson  "took  the  charge  in  person"  of  that 
colony;  (g)  that  "they  left  the  Red  River  with  their  belongings 
packed  on  the  backs  of  mules  and  ponies." 

There  was  an  immense  tract  of  fertile  land  in  the  Red  River 
country,  as  was  well  known  then  by  all  j)ersons  who  cared  to  write 
from  knowledge  and  not  from  their  imaginations.  Instead  of  a 
rajtid  increase  of  that  colony  its  increase  had  been  very  slow,  and 
continued  so  till  the  extension  of  railroads  there  (more  than  thirty 
years  after  the  time  of  which  Mr.  Hines  is  writing)  gave  them  ac- 
cess to  markets  for  their  produce. 

"In  March,  184.'?,  the  total  poi)ulati()n  of  the  Red  River  settle- 
ment was  ."),14;^,  of  which  number  2,7!>S  were  Roman  Catholics  and 
2,345  were  Protestants.  .  .  .  The  heads  of  families  were  870, 
of  whom  571  were  Indians  or  half-breeds,  natives  of  the  territory; 
152  Canadians.  01  Orkneymen,  40  Scotchmen,  22  Englishmen,  5 
Irishmen  and  2  Swiss,  and  Wales,  Italy,  Norway,  Denmark,  Ger- 
many, Poland  and  the  Ignited  States  of  America  one  each.  There 
was  also  one  Esquimaux.  .  .  .  The  people  revel  in  abundance, 
but  it  is  all  for  home  consumption;  they  have  no  outlet,  no  market 
for  their  j»roduce.  (Cf.  "Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  Territories  and  Van- 
couver's Island,"  by  Robert  Montgomerv  Martin,  London,  1840,  pp. 
21-22.) 

As  there  was  enough  fertile  land  in  the  Red  River  Settlement — 
now  known  as  Manitoba — to  support  more  than  a  hundred  times 
as  many  i)eople  as  lived  there  in  1841,  it  was  not  at  all  "because  of 
the  limited  area  of  arable  country  on  the  Red  River  that  a  party 
not  of  "about  thirty  families,"  but  of  "twenty-three  heads  of  fami- 
lies, in  iill  eighty  persons,  men,  women  and  children,''  were  engaged 
by  the  iludsou's  Bay  Co.  to  go  to  Oregon,  in  1841 — not  1842 — not 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  341 

as  colonists  to  strengthen  the  British  claim  to  Oregon  (which  was 
impossible  while  the  treaty  of  1827  continued  in  force),  but  as  half- 
servants  of  the  company,  to  work  the  farms  of  the  Puget's  Sound 
Agricultural  Co.  on  the  Cowlitz  River,  on  the  north  side  of  the  Co- 
lumbia, i.  e.,  in  the  region  which  the  English  hoped  to  retain  when 
the  boundary  line  should  be  settled. 

Instead  of  "Sir  George  Simpson  being  in  charge  of  this  party 
in  person,"  it  left  the  Red  River  Settlement  June  5,  1841,  five  days 
before  Sir  George  Simpson  arrived  there  (on  June  10,  1841),  from 
Montreal,  on  his  tour  around  the  world,  and  he  did  not  overtake 
them  till  July  19,  1841,  when  they  had  made  more  than  one-third 
of  the  journey  to  Fort  Vancouver,  and  he  and  his  party  only  re- 
mained with  them  part  of  two  days  and  the  night  between.  He 
passed  on  after  advising  that  they  should  change  their  route  to  that 
of  the  boat  parties  down  the  Columbia,  which  they  thought  they 
would  do,  but  afterward  followed  on  his  trail,  which  was  the  regular 
saddle  route  all  the  way  to  Fort  Colvile,  and  thence  down  the  Co- 
lumbia by  boats.  He  reached  Fort  Vancouver  on  or  about  August 
27,  1841,  but  this  Red  River  migration  did  not  arrive  at  Fort  Walla 
Walla,  220  miles  up  the  Columbia  from  Vancouver,  till  October  4, 
1841.  They  started  with  their  goods  packed  not  ''on  the  backs  of 
mules  and  ponies,"  but  in  the  Red  River  carts,  and  used  them  to 
the  mountains,  where  the  difficulties  of  the  way  were  so  much 
greater  than  on  the  route  from  the  States  to  Oregon  that  they  aban- 
doned their  carts  and  packed  their  goods  on  their  oxen  and  other 
spare  animals  the  rest  of  the  way.  Whether  this  migration — the 
only  one  ever  made,  or,  so  far  as  any  contemporary  evidence  shows, 
ever  planned  from  the  Red  River  Settlement  to  Oregon — was  in  1841 
or  1842  would  be  of  no  particular  consequence  if  it  were  not  that 
the  original,  or  Spalding-Gray  version  of  the  origin  of  Whitman's 
ride  made  that  ride  originate  in  the  announcement  in  September  or 
October,  1842,  that  these  Red  River  settlers  were  then  on  their 
way  to  ravish  Oregon  from  the  Ignited  States. 

With  this  demonstration  of  the  total  lack  of  accuracy  in  the 
particulgirs  on  which  Mr.  Hines  bases  his  accusations  vs.  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  the  reader  can  form  his  own  conclusions  as  to  the 
credence  to  be  given  to  his  charge  that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  op- 
posed the  settlement  of  the  country  and  oppressed  the  settlers. 

Turn  now  to  the  missionaries  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M. 

In  1835  Rev.  Samuel  Parker  went  to  Oregon  on  an  exploring 
tour,  and  this  is  what  the  Missionary  Herald  had  to  say,  on  p.  445, 
November,  1836,  about  his  reception  and  treatment  by  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co. : 

"Communications  have  been  received  from  Mr.  Parker,  dated 
May  21,  1836.     ...     He  received  much  aid  and  numerous  kind 


342  ACQ L  INITIOS    OF    OREGON 

attentions  fioni  the  fjentlemen  connected  with  the  TTndson's  Ray 
Co.  .  .  .  Facilities  have  been  all'orded  liini  by  them  for  explor- 
ing lar^c  tracts  of  country  not  otherwise  easily  accessible  by  him." 

{/(/em,  March,  1837,  p.  124)  ''Mr.  Parker  makes  a  jjrateful  men- 
tion of  the  kind  and  i)olite  treatment  lie  had  received  from  the 
otlicers  of  the  company,  who,  together  with  the  jientlemen  enj^ajjjed 
in  trade  from  the  Ignited  States,  with  whom  he  traveled  through 
the  mountains,  had  borne  nearly  all  his  expenses  of  conveyance, 
cloiliiiiu'  and  sultsistence,  he  not  having  been  obliged  to  sjtend  more 
than  two  dollars  in  money  from  the  time  he  left  the  Missouri  till 
his  arrival  at  the  Sandwich  Islands." 

Of  this  time  he  was  the  guest  of  the  Hudson's  Ray  Co.  continu- 
ously from  October  <*»,  18;>r),  to  July  14,  183(5,  when  he  reached  TTono- 
1  111  11  as  a  free  ])assenger  in  the  Hudson's  Ray  Oo.'s  ship. 

( For  Mr.  Parker's  grateful  acknowledgments  of  the  kindness  he 
received  at  the  various  posts  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  his  en- 
thusinsric  commendations  of  the  kind  treatment  of  the  Indians  by 
the  Hudson's  Ray  Co.,  Cf.  ''Parker's  Journal  of  an  Exploring  Tour 
Beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains."  Ithaca,  N.  Y.,  1838,  pp.  130,  131, 
132,  148,  109,  172,  272,  273,  304,  347). 

In  183()  the  Spalding-Whitman  party  went  overland  to  found 
the  American  P>oard  Mission,  and  July  IG,  1830,  from  the  rendez- 
vous near  Green  River,  in  a  six  and  a  half  page  foolscap  letter  to  D. 
Greene,  Secretary,  from  which  nothing  has  yet  been  printed.  Whit- 
man wrote:  "Ry  the  arrival  of  Messrs.  McOloud  and  ^McCay" 
(should  be  McLeod  and  McKay. — W.  I.  M.)  "we  are  furnished  with 
a  safe  and  direct  escort  to  Walla  Walla,  and  have  availed  ourselves 
of  theii-  company  and  protection.  We  received  the  most  flattering 
encouragement  from  these  gentlemen,  one  of  whom,  ^Ir.  McCloud, 
is  a  i)artner  in  the  North  West  Fur  Co.  (should  be  Hudson's  Ray 
Co.)  that  we  should  have  every  facility  in  our  journey,  and  all 
necessary  supplies  of  goods,  provisions,  etc.,  at  Walla  Walla." 

Fnder  the  gratuitous  escort  of  these  two  Hudson's  Ray  Co. 
traders  the  ])arty  traveled  not  only  to  Walla  Walla,  but  to  Fort 
Vancouver,  a  distance  of  more  than  1,000  miles,  or  more  than  one- 
half  of  their  whole  journey  from  the  Missouri  River  to  Vancouver. 

The  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  advocates  are  never  tired  of  ex- 
patiating on  the  hardships  of  this  journey,  and  the  great  heroism  it 
re(|uired  to  undertake  it,  but  as  they  were  every  mile  of  the  way 
under  the  escort  of  either  American  fur  traders  or  these  Hudson's 
Ray  Co.  traders,  they  were  all  the  way  ])erfectly  safe,  and  in  this 
same  letter  Whitman  wrote:  "I  see  no  reason  to  regret  our  choice 
of  a  journey  by  land.  .  .  .  It  is  one  of  the  best  trips  that  can 
be  made  for  invalids,  such  as  dys]tcptics.  liver,  spleen  or  scrofulous 
allections,  all  of  which  I  confidentlv  believe  will  be  greatly  relieved 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  343 

if  not  permanently  cured.  ...  In  my  own  case  and  Mrs.  Whit- 
man's we  are  more  than  compensated  for  the  journey  by  the  im- 
provement of  health."  Which  simply  shows  that  for  them,  as  for 
not  a  few  men  engaged  in  the  fur  trade  before  that  time,  the  over- 
land journey  ''was  its  own  reAvard''  as  a  benefit  to  their  health. 

Mrs.  Whitman  kept  a  journal  for  her  mother  of  this  journey 
(which  was  published  in  Transactions  Oregon  Pioneer  Assn.  for 
1891). 

It  contains  many  accounts  of  favors  extended  to  them  by  Messrs. 
McLeod  and  McKay  on  the  journey,  of  which  space  will  only  allow 
quoting  the  following:  ''August  27.  This  morning  Mr.  McLeod  re- 
mained behind  in  pursuit  of  game,  and  did  not  come  into  camp  until 
we  had  made  a  long  nooning,  yet  about  3  o'clock  he  came  into 
camp  loaded  with  wild  ducks,  having  taken  twenty-two.  Now, 
mother,  he  has,  just  as  he  always  did  during  the  whole  journey, 
sent  over  nine  of  them." 

All  that  relates  to  Whitman's  wagon  in  this  journal  of  Mrs. 
Whitman  has  been  already  quoted  in  Chapter  V. 

For  other  extracts  from  it  as  to  the  kindness  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.'s  officers  en  route  and  at  Forts  Hall,  Boise,  W^alla  Walla 
and  Vancouver,  Cf.  Transactions  Oregon  Pioneer  Assn.,  1891,  pp.  46, 
47,  48,  49,  51,  53,  56,  57,  58,  59,  63,  66. 

Mrs.  Whitman,  so  far  as  known,  kept  no  journal  except  this 
one  in  the  form  of  a  letter  to  her  mother  covering  (though  not  by 
any  means  for  every  day)  June  27  to  October  18,  1S36. 

In  Transactions  Oregon  Pioneer  Assn.,  1891  and  1893,  are  quite 
a  large  number  of  letters  of  Mrs.  Whitman,  and  a  few  of  her  hus- 
band, to  relations  and  friends,  and  there  are  many  passages  in 
these  stating  the  favors  done  them  by  various  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s 
officers,  and  showing  the  friendly  relations  subsisting  between  the 
various  mission  families  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  officers  in 
charge  of  Forts  Walla  Walla,  Colvile,  Vancouver,  Hall  and  Fort 
George  (i.  e.,  Astoria)  and  the  visiting  back  and  forth  between  the 
mission  families  and  these  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  forts,  and  there  is 
not  the  least  intimation  that  there  was  any  antagonism  between 
the  missions  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  I  regret  that  space  will 
not  allow  me  to  quote  all  these  extracts,  but  the  reader  will  find 
them  on  pages  88,  97,  103,  111,  139,  158-161,  164,  166,  168  and  189 
of  1891,  Trans.,  and  pages  111,  161,  206  and  207  of  1893  Trans. 

So  far  as  has  yet  appeared  Dr.  Whitman  kept  no  journal  at 
any  time,  and  if  either  W.  H.  Gray  or  his  wife  kept  journals  he 
carefully  refrained  from  ever  quoting  anything  from  any  of  them. 
Rev.  C.  Eells  kept  a  journal  constantly,  but  it  was  destroyed  when 
his  house  was  burned  in  1872.  His  eldest  son,  Mr.  Edw.  Eells,  told 
me  this  on  August  23,  1905,  at  Portland,  Ore. 


.{44  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGOX 

Mrs.  Eells,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Walker  aud  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Spalding 
seem  to  have  kept  journals  part  of  the  time,  and  in  the  Mss.  of  the 
Oregon  Historical  Society  are  the  following  fragmentary  journals 
of  these  people,  viz.,  Mrs.  Walker,  June,  1838,  to  December  20,  1838, 
and  September  7,  1847,  to  October  26,  1848;  Rev.  E.  Walker,  Sep- 
tember 10,  1838,  to  October  4,  1838,  and  January  5,  1841,  to  Novem- 
ber 1.-,,  1842. 

Mrs.  H.  H.  Spalding,  February  1,  1836,  to  June  8,  1840.  While 
in  the  Transactions  Oregon  Pioneer  Assn.  for  1889,  pp.  54-88  (a), 
is  printed  Mrs.  ('.  Eells'  Journal,  March  5  to  September  2,  1836. 

Kev.  II.  H.  Spalding  kept  a  journal  i)retty  regularly  from  No- 
vember, 1838,  to  April,  1842,  then  a  blank  till  February  21,  1843, 
and  then  a  few  entries  covering  a  page  and  a  half,  and  ending  March 
7,  1843.  This  journal  has  been  for  some  years  in  possession  of 
Rev.  M.  Eells. 

I  have  gone  over  all  of  these  with  care,  and  not  only  is  there 
not  a  sentence  in  any  one  of  them  indicating  the  slightest  feeling 
of  antagonism  between  any  of  these  missionaries  and  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.,  but  there  are  in  all  of  them  the  most  abundant  evidences 
that  the  mission  families  and  the  Chief  Traders  in  charge  of  Forts 
Hall,  Boise,  Walla  ^^'alla,  Vancouver  and  Colvile  were  on  the 
friendliest  ])Ossible  terms,  visiting  back  and  forth  freely,  and  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  officers  not  only  helping  them  to  establish 
their  several  mission  stations,  but  subsequently  rendering  them 
frequent  assistance  in  various  ways  as  long  as  the  missions  ex- 
isted. 

Want  of  space  only  allows  the  quotation  of  a  few  samples  on 
this  point. 

Mrs.  Eells'  journal  was  very  concise. 

The  mission  i)arty  consisted  of  six  men  and  four  women,  viz.: 
Rev.  C.  Eells  and  wife.  Rev.  A.  B.  Smith  and  wife,  Rev.  Elkanah 
Walker  and  wife,  Mr.  W.  H.  Gray  and  wife,  Mr.  Cornelius  Rogers 
and  a  "Mr.  Stevens,  an  old  mountain  man  whom  we  have  hired  to 
go  with  us."     (Cf.  Transactions,  1889,  p.  66.) 

"Friday,  July  27,  1838.  .  .  .  Arrive  at  Fort  Hall;  intro- 
duced to  Mr.  McKay,  one  of  the  Chief  Factors  of  the  Hudson's  Bsiy 
Fur  Co.  .  .  .  Received  kindly  by  all  at  the  fort."  .  .  "Sun- 
day, July  20th,  Mr.  Cray  lodges  in  the  fort.  .  .  About  10  o'clock 
Mr.  Ermatinger"  (the  chief  trader  in  charge  of  Fort  Hall  from 
1838  to  1842. — W.  I.  M.)  "comes  to  invite  us  to  breakfast;  says  he 
has  just  got  u}t.  After  breakfast  he  comes  again  to  invite  us  to 
have  pi-eaching  in  the  fort.  Afternoon,  Mr.  Eells  preaches  in  the 
dining  room;  some  fifty  or  sixty  hearers." 

'Tuesday,  July  31.  Make  arrangements  for  moving  camp.  .  . 
Ermatinger  gives  ten  pounds  sugar.'' 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  345 

"Wednesday,  August  15.  .  .  Encamped  on  the  river  opposite 
Fort  Boise;  feasted  with  milk,  butter,  turnips,  pumpkins  and  sal- 
mon." 

''Friday,  August  17.  .  .  Some  of  the  gentlemen  at  the  post 
sent  us  a  piece  of  sturgeon  for  breakfast." 

"Sunday,  August  19.  .  .  Mr.  Payton  (Payette)  sends  another 
sturgeon."     (Cf.  1889,  Transactions,  pp.  83,  86,  87.) 

Rev.  E.  Walker's  1838  journal  covers  his  and  Rev.  C.  Eells'  ex- 
ploring trip  to  decide  on  a  location  for  their  mission  station. 

They  reached  Fort  Col  vile  (about  230  miles  north  of  Whitman's 
mission). 

"Monday,  September  17,  1838"  (having  that  morning  eaten  the 
last  mouthful  of  their  stock  of  provisions),  the  journal  reads:  .  . 
"We  reached  here  about  1  this  day.  Received  a  cordial  welcome 
from  Mr.  McDonald  and  lady." 

"Wednesday,  September  19th.  .  .  After  dinner  I  opened  the 
subject  of  our  coming.  Found  Mr.  McDonald  favorably  disposed, 
and  willing  to  assist  us.  This  was  a  great  relief  to  my  mind.  We 
purposed  starting  tomorrow,  but  he  thought  it  not  best,  so  have 
altered  our  determination.  .  .  Mr.  McDonald  promised  to  send 
tools  to  us  at  Big  Head's  place,  so  we  shall  be  saved  the  trouble 
with  them  on  the  route." 

"Thursday,  September  20th.  Received  a  present  of  two  pairs  of 
moccasins  this  morning  from  Mr.  McDonald.  .  .  He  seems  more 
and  more  interested.  He  has  engaged  to  give  us  what  supplies  we 
want  for  the  journey,  and  to  send  some  on  for  us  while  building, 
and  told  us  if  we  want  more  to  send  for  them.  .  .  Mr.  McDonald 
said  he  felt  very  anxious  that  our  station  should  exceed  all  the  rest 
in  this  country." 

"Friday,  September  21st.  .  .  We  did  not  get  prepared  to 
start  till  nearly  11 ;  but  when  we  did  we  found  ourselves  well  pre- 
pared with  provisions  through  the  kindness  of  Mr.  McDonald  and 
lady." 

"He  sent  for  an  Indian,  one  of  the  Ponderays,  and  told  him  he 
must  take  care  of  our  animals  and  packs,  and  must  not  expect  any 
pay  for  it,  for  we  came  with  the  Bible  and  Testament  to  do  them 
good.  They  must  do  all  we  wanted  them  to.  Accordingly  we  had 
very  little  trouble  with  our  packs  and  animals." 

After  traveling  about  for  five  days  they  decided  to  locate  at 
Tshimakain  (The  Place  of  a  Spring)  (the  place  recommended  by 
Mr.  McDonald),  about  sixty-five  miles  south  of  Colvile,  and  not 
finding  any  tools  and  supplies  were  worrying  about  them,  when 
.  .  .  "to  our  joy  the  Indian  sent  by  Mr.  McDonald  arrived  soon 
after  dinner  with  two  axes,  10  pounds  of  Indian  meal,  30  pounds 
of  flour,  10  pounds  of  buffalo  meat  (dried),  15  pounds  of  bacon,  all 


346  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

of  the  first  quality,  making  05  pounds  in  all.  "Big  Head''  (the  In- 
dian chief  on  whose  land  they  had  located)  "'gave  us  some  potatoes 
soon  after,  so  that  we  have  a  good  stock  of  provisions  at  present, 
enough  to  last  us  what  time  we  wanted  to  stay." 

Turning  now  to  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding's  Journal  (from  which 
only  sixtyone  words  have  yet  been  published  that  have  any  bearing 
on  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story). 

In  December,  1847,  and  January,  1848,  as  shown  by  Spalding's 
own  letters  in  the  chajiter  on  "The  Whitman  Massacre  and  Its 
True  Causes,"  Spalding  thankfully  admitted  that  he  owed  his  own 
life  to  the  humanity  of  the  Catholic  priest.  Father  Brouillet,  and 
that  he  was  ready  to  implore  the  good  services  of  that  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.'s  officer,  the  Catholic  McBean,  who  had  succeeded,  in  184«),  the 
Scotch  Presbyterian,  McKinlay,  in  charge  of  Fort  Walla  Walla,  and 
also  the  aid  of  Ca])t.  Richard  Grant,  whom  he  and  Gray  subse- 
quently so  shamefully  slandered,  as  have  all  the  other  leading  ad- 
vocates of  the  Whitman  Legend,  and  that  in  letters  to  D.  Greene, 
Secretary,  he  gratefully  acknowledged  that  not  only  he  and  his  fam- 
ily, but  all  of  the  captives  at  Wailatpu,  a  total  of  sixty  persons, 
owed  their  rescue  from  death  at  the  hands  of  the  Indians  to  "the 
timely,  prompt,  judicious  and  Christian  efforts  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.,  and  especially  Mr,  Ogden  and  Mr.  Douglas,"  and  from  his  let- 
ters we  have  seen  how  great  and  constant  was  the  kindness  he  and 
his  family  had  received  year  by  year  from  Mr.  McDonald,  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  chief  trader  in  charge  of  Fort  Colvile,  some 
200  miles  northwest  of  his  station. 

In  his  journal  we  shall  see  that  from  Mr.  Pambrun  (the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.'s  chief  trader  in  charge  of  Fort  Walla  Walla — about 
12")  miles  west  of  his  station — till  his  death  in  May,  1841),  he  also 
received  friendly  assistance,  both  in  presents  and  in  helj)  to  keep 
the  Indians  in  order. 

September  19,  1838,  he  wrote :  .  .  "Canoes  return  from  AValla 
Walla  with  three  turkeys,  a  present  from  Mr.  Pambi'un." 

January  10,  1840 :  "Sabbath.  Good  number  at  Sunday  school. 
Mr.  Grifhn  preaches  in  English.  Meet  with  the  people  as  usual  at 
eve.  Mr.  Pambrun  speaks  to  the  people,  encourages  them  to  work 
their  land  and  to  listen  to  their  own  teacher  and  not  go  after 
strangers." 

Pambrun,  it  must  be  remembered,  was  not  only  a  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.'s  officer,  but  a  Catholic.  Could  any  stronger  proof  be  needed 
that  the  excitement  and  ex])osure  incident  to  S])alding's  narrow 
escape  at  the  time  of  the  Whitman  massacre  had  brought  on  the 
lunacy  predicted  by  A.  B.  Smith  and  Dr.  Whitman  (Cf.  Smith's 
letter  of  September  28,  1840),  than  the  fact  that  in  the  summer  of 
1848  Spalding  started  the  story  and  all  the  rest  of  his  life  asserted 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  347 

it  to  be  true  that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  the  Catholics  had  in- 
stigated the  Whitman  massacre  to  break  up  Protestant  missions 
and  destroy  American  settlements  in  Oregon? 

Passing  over  their  very  kind  reception  at  Walla  Walla,  and  the 
kindness  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  furnishing  them  transporta- 
tion down  the  Columbia  to  Fort  Vancouver,  and  their  hospitable 
reception  there  (where  the  two  wives  remained  as  guests  from  Sep- 
tember 12  to  November  3,  1836,  while  their  husbands  were  select- 
ing sites  for  missions  and  building  houses),  I  can  only  find  space 
to  quote  the  following  from  Mrs.  Whitman's  journal,  under  date  of 
September  16th.  After  describing  the  extensive  farming  and  stock- 
raising  operations  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  at  Vancouver,  and  their 
mills  there  and  at  Colvile,  she  says:  "Dr.  McLoughlin  promises  to 
lend  us  enough  to  make  a  beginning,  and  all  the  return  he  asks  is 
that  we  supply  other  settlers  in  the  same  way.  He  appears  desir- 
ous to  afford  us  every  facility  for  living  in  his  power.  No  person 
could  have  received  a  more  hearty  welcome,  or  be  treated  with 
greater  kindness  than  we  have  been  since  our  arrival."  This  gen- 
erous offer  to  help  these  American  Presbyterian  missionaries  to 
establish  themselves,  precisely  as  two  years  before  he  had  helped 
the  Methodist  missionaries,  and  as  McDonald,  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.'s  Chief  Trader  at  Fort  Colvile  helped  Spalding  in  1836,  and  in 
1838  helped  Eells  and  Walker,  with  wheat  and  other  grains,  and 
vegetables  for  seed  and  provisions,  till  they  could  raise  a  crop,  and 
the  loan  of  cattle  and  hogs  and  horses  and  farming  implements, 
with  no  wish  for  any  return  except  that  they  should  ''pass  the  good 
deed  along,"  by  ''helping  others  in  the  same  way,"  was  the  curious 
way  in  which  the  great-hearted  McLoughlin,  head  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.  in  Oregon,  and  whose  word  was  absolute  law  at  all  their 
posts  west  of  the  Rockies  from  1824  to  184.5,  though  himself  a  Cath- 
olic, "opposed  the  American  occupation  of  Oregon,"  by  Protestant 
missionaries,  and  he  took  the  same  remarkable  way  of  opposing  the 
establishment  of  American  settlers"  by  treating  the  great  migra- 
tions of  1842,  1843  and  1844  and  1845  in  precisely  the  same  way, 
except  that  as  there  were  so  many  of  them,  and  they  were  not  mis- 
sionaries, he  did  expect  them  to  pay,  from  the  crops  they  should 
raise,  the  advances  he  made  to  them,  without  which  advances  there 
must  have  been  great  suffering  among  them. 

May  5,  1837,  Dr.  Whitman  in  an  eight-page  foolscap  letter  to  D. 
Greene,  Secretary,  wrote :  "At  Vancouver  we  were  received  in  the 
kindest  manner  by  Dr.  McLoughlin,  T'hief  Factor,  etc.,  and  by  all 
the  other  gentlemen  of  the  company.  After  obtaining  such  sup- 
plies as  we  needed  for  building  and  exploring,  and  making  arrange- 
ments for  future  supplies,  we  returned  to  explore  and  build,  leaving 
our  wives  at  Vancouver.     .     .     .     The  present  worship  of  the  In- 


348  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

dians  was  estaltlislied  l)y  tlie  traders  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  (^o.  It 
coiisisis  of  siiiji;in«;-  and  a  form  of  prayer  taught  them,  after  which 
the  Chief  gives  them  a  talk.  It  has  had  a  favorable  influence  on 
them  in  rendering  them  more  civil  and  little  addicted  to  steal. 
Some  of  the  leading  truths  of  civilization  have  been  taught  them. 

''A  system  of  punishment  for  crime  established  by  the  traders 
has  done  much  good." 

Mrs.  S])alding  also  kept  a  diary  of  their  journey  to  Oregon  (now 
among  Mss.  of  Oiegon  Historical  Society),  and  under  date  of  July 
G,  1830,  at  the  rendezvous  on  (Jreen  Kiver,  she  wrote:  "A  trader 
of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  with  a  party  of  men,  has  arrived  and 
camped  near.  .  .  .  He  has  kindly  invited  us  to  travel  with  his 
company,  promising  to  atford  us  all  the  assistance  in  his  ])Ower." 
August  3,  lS3f>,  of  their  reception  at  Port  Hall  she  wrote:  "Ar- 
rived at  this  place  a  little  after  noon;  were  invited  to  dine  at  the 
fort,  where  we  again  had  a  taste  of  bread."  August  20,  183G,  at 
Snake  Foi-t  or  Fort  Boise,  she  wrote:  "Have  received  numy  favors 
from  the  gentlemen  of  the  fort."  September  3,  183G,  at  Fort  Walla 
Walla,  she  wrote:  "Reached  this  post  today.  Mr.  Pambrun,  the 
dei'k  in  charge  of  this  establishment,  kindly  received  us  into  his 
dwelling  as  guests,  for  which  may  we  feel  true  gratitude."  Sep- 
tember 13,  1830,  at  Fort  Vancouver:  "Reached  this  ])lace  yester- 
day. .  .  .  Met  with  the  warmest  expressions  of  friendshi])  and 
find  ourselves  in  the  midst  of  civilization,  where  the  luxuries  of  this 
life  seem  to  abound." 

In  the  Missiouiui)  Herald  for  October,  1838,  p.  387,  is  a  summary 
of  a  letter  of  Mr.  Spalding,  dated  September  4,  1837,  in  w'hich,  after 
brief  description  of  Fort  Colvile,  then  in  charge  of  Mr.  ^McDonald, 
and  stating  that  the  comi)any  raised  3,50(1  bushels  of  gi-ain  and  an 
equal  (piantity  of  ])otatoes  there,  it  continues:  "Mr.  McDonald 
kindly  furnished  Mr.  Spalding  with  thirty-five  bushels  of  grain, 
twelve  huTidred-weight  of  flour,  a  yoke  of  oxen  and  three  swine  to 
aid  him  in  beginning  his  new  establishment  among  the  Nez  Perces, 
besides  numerous  other  articles  for  the  comfort  of  his  family."  A 
later  letter  of  Mr.  Spalding  shows  that  these  supplies  were  a  free 
gift. 

.M;n-(h  1.").  18;;8,  Mr.  Spalding  w^rote  a  letter  to  O.  Oreene,  Secre- 
tary (from  which  I  think  nothing  has  yet  been  published),  in  which, 
after  stating  cost  of  flour  at  Vancouver,  he  continues: 

"The  reason  of  my  asking  flour  from  Boston  was  to  provide  for 
extremities,  as  we  were  told  sevei-al  times  while  on  our  journey  by 
a  gentleman  who  had  spent  some  time  at  Vancouver  that  we  must 
not  expect  many  favois  fiom  Vancouver  and  Walla  Walla.  But 
the  Lord  oi-dered  it  otherwise,  and  we  find  in  fhe  gentlemen  of  the 
Hon.  Hudson's  liay  Co.  a  disposition  to  render  \is  every  possible 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  349 

favor.  Of  course  there  is  no  reason  why  this  should  pass  from  your 
room.  .  .  .  Dr.  McLoughlin  leaves  this  spring  for  England, 
passing  with  the  express  to  Montreal,  and  has  expressed  a  deter- 
mination to  visit  Boston  if  possible.  He  will  receive  a  letter  of 
introduction  from  us  to  the  secretaries  of  the  Board.  Should  he  call 
he  will  take  pleasure  in  giving  you  all  the  information  you  may 
wish  respecting  this  country.  In  a  former  letter  I  have  mentioned 
his  strong  desire  that  the  Board  should  commence  immediately  a 
mission  in  the  lower  country.  As  you  will  have  seen  in  a  former  let- 
ter he  speaks  very  favorably  of  the  Cowlitz.  Should  he  fail  of  vis- 
iting Boston,  I  would  suggest  the  propriety  of  opening  a  corre- 
spondence with  him," 

September  11,  1838.     Spalding  to  D.  Greene,  Secretary  (a  nine- 
page  letter  hitherto  unpublished).     After  defending  himself  and 
Whitman  from  the  charge  that  they  were  devoting  too  much  of  their 
time  to  farming  he  goes  on :     "The  question  will  be  asked,  has  not 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  several  establishments  in  the  country  where 
large  quantities  of  grain  are  raised  every  year?     Yes,  two,  Van- 
couver and  Colvile.    But  these  and  all  other  posts  of  the  company 
in  the  country  are  for  a  specified  object,  and  did  the  gentlemen  in 
charge  adhere  strictly  to  their  instructions  no  missionary  or  settler 
could  receive  any  article  or  anything  from  these  posts  except  for 
beaver,  and  no  provisions  for  that,  as  they  are  raised  only  at  two 
stations  to  any  extent,  viz.,  Vancouver  and  Colvile,  and  at  these 
only  sufticient  to  meet  the  wants  of  the  company,  the  former  de- 
signed for  the  shipping  and  the  posts  on  or  near  the  coast,  the  lat- 
ter for  the  posts  in  the  interior.     But  the  gentlemen  in  charge  at 
these  stations  have  seen  fit  to  treat  us  with  the  greatest  kindness 
and  to  furnish  us  as  yet  with  every  needed  merchandise,  for  which 
they  have  been  blamed  from  the  other  side  of  the  mountains,  and 
with  sufficient  provisions  for  our  two  families  to  begin  with.     But 
these  supplies,  especially  provisions,  have  ever  been  furnished  us 
as  a  favor,  and  not  in  the  way  of  trade,  and  for  this  truly  great 
favor  I  trust  we  ever  shall  be  truly  thankful ;  but  while  we  remem- 
ber these  favors  and  bless  God  for  so  wonderfully  providing  for  us 
in  the  infancy  of  our  mission,  I  hope  that  none  of  us  will  bring  our- 
selves to  think  that  because  we  are  missionaries  we  are  therefore 
not  to  be  regulated  by  the  rules  that  regulate  gentlemen  in  their 
intercourse  with  each  other,  but  grasp  all  favors  we  can  get  and 
ask  for  more,  which  would  only  certainly  make  it  necessary  for  the 
company  sooner  or  later  to  deny  us  and  throw  us  on  our  own  re- 
sources, but  bring  ourselves  and  perhaps  the  Board  into  disgrace. 
Consequently  your  mission  in  this  country  cannot  depend  on  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  for  supplies  of  provisions.     Doubtless  a  station 
in  the  region  of  Colvile  would  receive,  as  I  have,  abundance  of  pro- 


350  ACQiI;SlTIOX    OF    OREGON 

visions  for  one  or  two  years  till  it  could  sustain  itself,  provided  the 
Yankee  be  not  too  pronounced  in  questions,  etc.,  such  as  "What  do 
you  charjie  a  pound  for  pork?'  'What  will  you  let  nie  have  a  bushel 
of  wheat  for?'  'Can  I  get  a  pound  of  sugar  here?'  Mr.  McDonald 
gave  nie  to  understand  when  here  that  the  supplies  of  provisions  I 
received  last  fall  were  all  that  the  fort  could  safely  jiart  with,  and 
that  was  furnished  as  a  favor,  as  all  supplies  from  that  fort  would 
be,  and  not  in  the  way  of  trade.  And  here  let  me  say  that  the 
favors  which  we  have  received  from  Mr.  McDonald  and  wife  have 
not  been  few  nor  of  little  consequence  to  us.  Besides  the  sui)plies 
furnished  us  for  a  given  price,  which  are  no  less  favors  for  being 
sold,  and  frequent  presents  of  a  bag  of  fine  flour,  a  ham,  a  side  of 
pork,  buffalo  tongues,  etc.,  etc.,  there  has  been  no  charge  for  the 
first  supply  of  ])rovisions  in  1880,  the  amount  of  which  I  will  give 
you  when  1  ani  certain  it  is  not  to  be  charged." 

September  22,  1838,  Spalding  to  D.  Greene,  Secretary  (hitherto 
unpublished). 

Resides  a  financial  statement  of  the  mission  it  contains  the  fol- 
lowing: 

'*As  we  are  not  in  a  country  of  trade  except  for  beaver,  all  our 
supplies  are  furnished  as  favors,  and  not  in  the  way  of  barter. 
They  are  furnished  us  at  only  80  per  cent,  advance  on  the  prime 
cost  in  London.  We  feel  ourselves  greatly  favored  that  we  can  re- 
ceive our  supplies  in  this  country  without  being  obliged  to  wait  two 
or  four  years  for  their  arrival  from  Boston,  But  if  we  may  not 
dictate  as  to  our  drafts,  we  may  regulate  the  time  of  sending  in 
our  bills  (and)  as  our  drafts  usually  go  out  in  the  spring  our  bills 
can  usually  be  sent  down  in  the  summer,  which  will  be  the  same  as 
drawing  at  ten  or  eleven  months'  sight." 

Some  of  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story, 
notably  Gray,  Barrows  and  Craighead,  have  declared  that  after  the 
Catholic  missionaries  reached  Oregon  (which  was  in  1838)  there 
was  a  marked  change  for  the  worse  in  the  actions  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.  toward  Americans. 

T^t  us  see  what  the  record  says. 

.July  13,  1841,  Dr.  Whitman  wrote  a  six-page  letter  to  D.  Greene, 
Secretary  (from  which  nothing  has  yet  been  printed),  in  which  we 
find  the  following:  "Your  fears  lest  our  good  understanding  with 
the  gentlemen  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  should  have  been  inter- 
rupted are  not  well  founded — for  it  has  remained  undisturbed  up 
to  this  date;  indeed,  we  never  were  on  better  terms  than  at  present. 
I  believe  I  have  told  you  that  Mr.  McLoughlin  and  Mr.  Pambrun 
were  the  only  two  professed  Catholics  among  the  gentlemen  of  the 
company  with  whom  we  have  to  do  business.     To  the  hour  of  Mr. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  351 

Pambnin's  death  (which  was  in  May,  1841),  without  interruption 
we  were  growing  more  and  more  in  confidence  and  kind  offices." 

Mr,  Pambrun  had  been  continuously  in  charge  of  Fort  Walla 
Walla,  only  twenty-five  miles  from  Whitman's  Station,  from  1832 
to  1841,  and  every  American  who  went  there  in  all  those  years  and 
has  left  any  record  spoke  in  the  highest  terms  of  his  kindness  and 
hospitality. 

The  mission  house  in  which  Mr.  Eells  lived  burned  January  11, 
1841,  and  March  6,  1841,  Eev.  C.  Eells  wrote  to  D.  Greene,  Secre- 
tary, a  letter  the  essential  parts  of  which  were  printed  in  the  Mis- 
sionarij  Herald  for  October,  1841.  After  giving  an  account  of  the 
fire,  he  continues : 

"Mr.  McDonald,  who  is  in  charge  of  Fort  Colvile"  (sixty  miles 
from  them),  "on  hearing  of  our  misfortune,  unasked,  dispatched 
four  men  immediately,  and  they  soon  made  our  house  habitable. 
Two  gentlemen  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  Messrs.  McLean  and  Mc- 
Pherson,  volunteered  their  services  to  assist  in  whatever  was  neces- 
sary to  be  done,  and  came  at  the  same  time  with  them,  or  rather 
led  the  march. 

"All  camped  upon  the  ground  when  the  mercury  must  have  been 
not  less  than  10  below  zero  and  the  snow  from  six  inches  to  one  foot 
in  depth.  This  is  but  a  specimen  of  the  unvarying  kindness  shown 
us  by  the  gentlemen  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  with  whom  we  have 
had  any  particular  intercourse  or  connection." 

No  advocate  of  the  Whitman  Legend  has  ever  quoted  this  letter, 
or  alluded  to  this  action  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  except  that  Rev. 
M.  Eells,  in  the  life  of  his  father.  Rev.  C.  Eells,  published  it  in  1895, 
but  he  has  never  even  alluded  to  it  in  any  of  his  articles  specially 
devoted  to  advocating  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story. 

Rev.  E.  Walker's  diary,  under  date  of  Sunday,  January  17,  1841, 
reads  as  follows: 

"Just  as  the  sun  was  setting  Mr.  McLean  and  Mr.  McPherson 
rode  up  with  four  men  to  assist  in  repairing  the  burnt  house  and 
bringing  letters  to  Mr.  Eells  and  myself  from  Mr.  McDonald. 

"They  were  more  or  less  frozen  and  sufl'ered  much  on  the  route." 

March  18,  1845,  Rev.  C.  Eells  wrote  an  eight-page  letter  to  D. 
Greene,  Secretary,  in  which  is  the  following  concerning  Mr.  Mc- 
Donald, who  had  for  years  been  in  charge  of  Fort  Colvile — the  near- 
est white  neighbor  they  had — and  who  had  left  Fort  Colvile  in  Sep- 
tember, 1844,  to  take  his  children  where  they  could  be  educated: 
^'The  kindness  of  that  estimable  family  toward  us  was  unabated  to 
the  last.  The  politeness  and  cordiality  with  which  we  have  ever 
been  welcomed  to  their  generous  hospitality,  the  prompt  and  cheer- 
ful manner  in  which  they  have  attended  to  frequent  calls  for  assist- 


352  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

ance  and  the  numerous  unsolicited  and  gratuitous  favors  they  have 
conferred  upon  us  deserve  grateful  acknowledgment." 

John  Lee  Lewes  succeeded  McDonald  at  Fort  Colvile  and  was 
eciually  kind  to  these  missionaries. 

Rev.  E.  Walker  to  D.  Greene,  April  3,  1848,  says  that  on  Decem- 
ber 0,  1847,  when  the  news  of  the  Whitman  massacre  reached  them, 
they  sent  an  express  to  Fort  Colvile,  and  Mr.  Lewes  at  once  replied, 
urging  if  there  seemed  to  them  any  danger  that  they  *'fly  to  this 
establishment  one  and  all  without  delay,  and  T  will  do  my  best  for 
your  ]»rotection,  till  we  can  find  the  means  to  convey  you  all  to  A'an- 
couver,  or  till  the  times  of  peace  return  again,  making  it  safe  for 
you  to  return  to  your  own  abode." 

They  remained  at  Tshimakain  till  Wednesday,  March  15th,  but 
the  following  extracts  from  Mrs.  Walker's  journal  will  show  how 
earnestly  solicitous  Mr.  Lewes  was  for  their  safety: 

"Saturday,  February  12,  1848.  An  express  from  Colvile.  Mr. 
Lewes  alarmed  about  us  in  consequence  of  Indian  rumors.  We  are 
much  perplexed  to  know  what  to  do.    We  fear  to  go,  we  fear  to  stay. 

"Sunday,  13th.  .  .  .  This  afternoon  another  express  arrived 
from  Colvile.  Affairs  there  have  taken  a  serious  turn.  The  men  are 
under  arms  and  in  alarm  for  themselves  and  for  us. 

"Sunday,  20th.  .  ,  ,  Another  letter  from  Mr.  Lewes.  He 
has  also  sent  a  Canadian  to  remain  awhile. 

"Friday,  March  10th.     Thos.  Roy  left  for  Colvile  this  morning. 

"Sunday,  March  12th.  Frederick  Lewes  (son  of  John  I^e  Lewes) 
and  Thomas  Roy  arrived.  Mr.  Lewes  seems  rather  afraid  to  have 
us  remain  longer. 

"Monday,  March  13th.  We  conclude  that  it  is  best  to  remove 
to  Colvile  for  awhile. 

"Wednesday.  ^Larch  15th.  We  left  home  about  noon,  perhaps 
to  return  no  more. 

"Saturday,  March  ISth.  We  reached  Colvile  about  noon,  where 
we  received  a  cordial  welcome." 

The  two  families  remained  guests  of  Mr.  Lewes  till  June  1,  1848, 
when  they  left  under  an  escort  of  the  First  Oregon  Riflemen,  and 
under  date  of  June  1,  1848  (in  a  twenty-two  page  letter  in  the  form 
of  a  diary)  to  Rev.  D.  Greene,  Secretary,  Rev,  C.  Eells  wrote: 
"With  emotions  which  we  cannot  well  express  for  the  great  kind- 
ness and  invaluable  assistance  of  John  Lee  Lewes,  Esq.,  we  took 
leave  of  that  worthy  gentleman." 

In  is;},")  Lieut.  W.  A.  Slacum,  of  the  Ignited  States  Navy,  was 
sent  by  I'resident  Jackson's  personal  orders  on  a  special  mission  to 
obtain  all  possible  information  that  would  be  useful  to  our  Govern- 
ment about  Oregon,  and  his  niemorlnl  was  printed  as  b^en.  Ex.  Doc. 
No.  24,  25th  (.'ong.,  2d  Sess. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  353 

In  it  he  says :  "^Mr.  Jason  Lee,  one  of  the  founders  of  the  Meth- 
odist Mission,  acknowledges  the  kindest  assistance  from  Dr.  Mc- 
Longhlin,  of  Fort  Vancouver,  who  gave  him  the  use  of  horses,  oxen 
and  milch  cows,  and  furnished  him  all  supplies.  Indeed  Dr.  Mc- 
Loughlin  has  acted  toward  many  of  the  settlers  in  the  same  manner, 
giving  them  the  use  of  cattle  and  horses  on  the  following  terms: 

''The  produce  of  the  neat  cattle  and  horses  belong  to  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.,  and  are  liable  to  be  called  for  at  any  time.  If  the 
cattle  die,  the  persons  holding  them  are  not  charged  with  their  value. 
Horses  to  be  returned  in  kind,  or  the  sum  of  $8,  the  current  value  of 
the  horse,  is  charged." 

As  to  his  own  treatment  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  there  is  only 
space  for  the  following  extract : 

(P.  5)  "The  next  day  Mr.  Douglas,  returning  from  Fort 
George,  called  aboard  the  Loriot,  and  repeated  the  invitation  given 
me  by  Mr.  Finlayson  to  visit  Fort  Vancouver ;  and  as  there  was  but 
one  more  Indian  settlement  between  this  point  and  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.'s  establishment  at  Vancouver,  I  embarked  with  Mr.  Doug- 
lass, in  his  canoe,  with  nine  'Canadian  voyagers.'  We  made  about 
fifty  miles  in  twenty-four  hours  and  landed  next  day  at  the  fort, 
where  I  met  a  hospitable  reception  from  Dr.  John  McLoughlin  and 
Mr.  Duncan  Finlayson." 

In  1839  Thomas  J.  Farnham  (characterized  by  a  prominent  Eng- 
lishman who  traveled  with  him  on  the  Pacific  as  "a  flamboyantly 
patriotic  American"),  went  to  Oregon  at  the  head  of  a  small  migra- 
tion, mostly  from  the  vicinity  of  Peoria,  111.  In  1841  he  published, 
at  Poughkeepsie,  N.  Y.,  'Travels  in  the  Great  Western  Prairies,  and 
in  the  Anahuac  and  Rocky  Mountains,  and  in  the  Oregon  Territory," 
of  which  two  more  editions  were  published  in  New  York  City,  and 
one  in  London  in  1843. 

He  had  this  to  say  of  his  reception  and  treatment  by  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  in  their  "desperate  attempts  to  prevent  Americans 
reaching  and  settling  Oregon." 

(P.  132-6)  "A  friendly  salutation  was  followed  by  an  invita- 
tion to  enter  the  fort,  and  a  'welcome  to  Fort  Hall'  was  given  in  a 
manner  so  kind  and  obliging  that  nothing  seemed  wanting  to  make 
us  feel  that  we  were  at  home.  .  .  .  Goods  are  sold  at  this  estab- 
lishment 100  per  cent,  lower  than  at  the  American  posts." 

(He  doubtless  meant  for  half  the  price,  which  is  50  instead  of 
100  per  cent,  lower. — W.  I.  M.) 

Having  spent  three  days  enjoying  the  kindest  hospitality  at  Fort 
Hall,  Farnham  went  on  and  (on  pp.  83-84  ante)  we  have  already 
quoted  his  equally  kind  reception  at  Fort  Boise. 

September  22,  1830,  Mr.  Farnham  reached  Whitman's  station, 
and  under  date  of  September  27th  he  thus  records  the  arrival  of 


354  .[rQJ'TFijriOy    OF    OREGOX 

Chief  Trader  Erniatinf;er,  on  his  return  from  Vancouver  to  Fort 
Hall  (p.  153)  :  "In  the  afternoon  of  this  date,  the  arrival  of  Mr. 
Eriiiatinjier,  the  senior  clerk  at  Fort  Hall,  created  quite  a  sensation. 
His  unitorni  kindness  to  the  missionaries  has  endeared  him  to 
them." 

There  is  not  one  Avoi-d  in  any  contemporaneous  letter  or  diary 
of  any  of  the  American  missionaries  or  travelers  who  had  to  do 
with  Mr.  Ermatinji^er  which  is  not  of  the  same  tenor  as  this,  and 
as  the  extract  from  Father  De  Smet  heretofore  quoted  (on  p.  124). 
But  some  years  later  Ermatinoer  became  a  Catholic,  and  so  Cray, 
some  years  later  still,  when  l^rmatinjier  was  dead,  began  to  abuse 
him,  and  thouj^h  most  of  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Legend  have 
refrained  from  following  Gray  in  this  matter,  the  very  imaginative 
Mrs.  Dye,  in  "McLoughlin  and  Old  Oregon"  (McClurg,  1900),  de- 
votes Chapter  XXIT.  to  ''Ermatinger  Guards  the  Frontier,''  and 
though  he  was  certainly  in  command  of  Fort  ITall  in  183S  and  1839, 
she  represents  him  as  having  been  sent  to  Fort  Hall  in  1840  (the 
very  year  that  he  helj)ed  Newell,  Meek  and  Wilkins  to  outfit  and 
drive  from  there  to  Walla  Walla  the  tirst  three  wagons  which  ever 
went  through  to  the  Columbia  (Cf.  pp.  85-88  ante),  to  prevent 
wagons  going  beyond  there  to  Oregon,  and  to  deceive  the  mission- 
aries and  Americans  generally  as  to  the  accessibility  of  Oregon 
from  the  T'nited  States!  She  quotes  not  a  solitary  authority  for 
her  statements  on  these  points,  but  says:  ''He  slyly  led  the  mis-, 
sionaries  through  the  most  difficult  goat  trails  over  the  mountains." 
.  .  .  "Through  jungles  (things  which  cannot  be  found  between 
Fort  Hall  and  the  Columbia  River. — W.  I.  M.)  and  over  mountain 
patches  of  snow,  where  never  man  or  beast  had  trod  before."  This 
related  to  the  parties  of  1840  and  1841,  and  when  we  come  to  exam- 
ine Lieut.  Wilkes'  report  we  shall  see  how  very  wide  of  the  truth 
her  statements  are  as  to  the  missionaries  of  1840  as  far  as  their 
opinion  of  the  accessibility  of  Oregon  from  the  States  is  concerned, 
while  Newell's  account  hereinbefore  quoted  of  the  wagons  of  1840 
from  Fort  Hall  to  Walla  Walla  makes  it  absolutely  certain  that 
Ermatinger  did  not,  as  Mrs.  Dye  asserts,  conduct  these  missionaries 
at  all.  Instead  of  giving  the  correct  account  (as  Newell  himself 
gave  it)  of  Ermatinger  helping  Meek,  Wilkins  and  himself  drive 
through  three  wagons  from  Fort  Hall,  Mrs.  Dye  says  in  Chapter 
XX :  "Jo  Meek,  the  American  trapper,  and  his  'i)ard'  had  decided 
to  settle  in  the  Willamette  Valley.  They  went  to  Fort  Boise  and 
got  Whitman's  'old  wagon.'  Into  it  they  packed  their  Indian  wives 
and  bjibies,  and  di'ove  by  a  recently  discovered  trail  over  the  Blue 
Mountains  to  Wailatpu." 

For  this,  as  in  fact  for  all  the  statements  in  her  book,  she  quotes 
DO  authoritv. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  355 

But  that  is  doubtless  the  safest  way  when  a  writer  desires  to 
write  history  out  of  the  profound  depths  of  a  very  lively  imagina- 
tion. 

(P.  155)  Farnham  thus  relates  his  reception  and  treatment  at 
Fort  Walla  Walla:  "I  was  kindly  received  by  Mr.  Pambrun  at 
Walla  Walla.  This  gentleman  is  a  half-pay  officer  in  the  British 
Army.  ...  I  breakfasted  with  him  and  his  family.  ...  I 
tarried  only  two  hours  with  the  hospitable  Mr.  Pambrun,  but  as  if 
determined  that  I  should  remember  that  I  would  have  been  a  wel- 
come guest  a  much  longer  time,  he  put  some  tea  and  sugar  into  the 
packs,  ...  A  fine,  companionable  fellow.  I  hope  he  will  com- 
mand Fort  Walla  Walla  as  long  as  Britons  occupy  it,  and  live  a 
hundred  years  afterward." 

(P.  170)  He  thus  describes  his  reception  and  treatment  at  Fort 
Vancouver:  "Mr.  James  Douglas,  the  gentleman  who  has  been  in 
charge  of  the  post  during  the  absence  of  Dr.  McLoughlin"  (while 
on  his  trip  to  England  and  back)  ''conducted  us  to  a  room  warmed 
by  a  well-fed  stove;  insisted  that  I  should  exchange  my  wet  gar- 
ments for  dry  ones,  and  proffered  every  other  act  that  the  kindest 
hospitality  could  suggest  to  relieve  me  of  the  discomforts  resulting 
from  four  months'  journeying  in  the  wilderness." 

The  missionary  parties  of  1838,  1839  and  1840  were  just  as 
kindly  received  and  treated  at  these  forts  as  Farnham,  except  that 
the  1838  party  (Gray,  C.  Eells,  A.  B.  Smith,  E.  Walker  and  their 
wives,  Mr.  Stevens  and  Cornelius  Rogers)  did  not  go  to  Walla  Walla 
and  Vancouver.  Barrows,  with  his  habitual  indifference  as  to  facts, 
says  (p.  147),  speaking  of  the  1838  party:  "Impediments,  perils 
and  Indians  do  not  seem  to  have  been  put  before  their  fancies  there 
at  that  fur  traders'  Gibraltar,  for  they  had  no  carriages.  They  had 
acted  on  the  already  well-established  impressions  in  the  East  that 
carriages  could  not  travel  to  Oregon."  This  is  the  sort  of  imagina- 
tive writing  about  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  posts  that  all  the  advocates 
of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Story  indulge  in. 

One  of  Fremont's  party  to  Oregon  in  1843  was  Col.  Wm.  Gil- 
pin, graduate  of  West  Point,  who  took  a  distinguished  part  in 
the  Mexican  War  and  was  afterward  Governor  of  Colorado.  In 
1867  he  testified  in  Washington,  D.  C,  in  the  case  of  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  vs.  the  United  States  that  he  spent  several  days  at 
Fort  Hall  in  September,  1843,  and  several  weeks  there  on  his  re- 
turn in  1844,  and  that  it  was  an  adobe  and  log  cabin  trading  post, 
worth  in  his  judgment  about  |2,000,  and  occupied  by  eleven  men 
(Hudson's  Bay  Co.  vs.  United  States  Ev.,  Vol.  VI.,  p.  330).  "So 
much  for  this  fur  traders'  Gibraltar."  That  there  was  no  "well- 
established  impression  in  the  States  that  carriages  could  not  travel 
to  Oregon"  is  evident  from  the  fact  that  Dr.  Weed,  who  kept  a  re- 


35«  ACQUISITION^    OF    OREGON 

li<ii()us  l)()ok  store  in  Cincinnati  (and  was  the  agent  there  of  the 
Aniei'ican  Hoard  Corns.  Foreign  Missions),  sent  a  wagon  to  the 
frontier  for  this  party,  which  not  being  suitable  they  traded  for 
another,  and  Gray,  in  a  letter  (never  yet  published)  to  1),  Greene, 
Secretary,  dated  Kendezvous  on  Wind  Kiver,  July  (no  day),  1838, 
thus  describes  its  disposition:  "The  wagon  we  purchased  to  sup- 
ply the  place  of  the  one  sent  by  Dr.  Weed  we  have  exchanged  with 
Capt.  Fontenelle  (an  American  fur  trader  never  connected  with  the 
Tliidson's  Bay  Co.),  who  kindly  exchanged  with  us  when  we  could 
bring  it  no  farther  for  want  of  horses."  This  was  more  than  seven 
hundred  miles  east  of  Fort  Hall,  for,  though  Gray  does  not  state 
the  precise  place  where  the  trade  was  made,  Mrs.  Eells'  diary  for 
May,  31,  1838,  says:  "Give  the  wagon  to  Capts.  Drips  and  Fon- 
tenelle" (Cf.  Transactions  Oregon  Pioneer  Assn.,  1889,  j).  73).  This 
was  when  they  were  camped  at  Fort  William  on  Laramie  Fork  of 
the  Platte  River. 

The  i.ai'lies  of  1839  and  1840  left  their  wagons  at  Fort  Hall  for 
precisely  the  same  reason  that  Whitman  left  his  cart  at  Fort  Boise, 
and  Gray  traded  off  his  wagon  to  Fontenelle  "on  account  of  the 
fatigue  of  our  animals." 

We  have  already  (pp.  227-232  ante)  stated  the  great  extent  and 
value  of  Lieut.  Wilkes'  explorations  of  Oregon  during  April  to 
October,  1841,  and  quoted  from  his  hitherto  unpublished  dispatch 
No.  9S  and  from  his  special  report  of  June  13,  1842,  to  the  Navy 
Department. 

Surely  if  the  TTudson's  Bay  Co.  was  disposed  to  throw  obstacles 
in  the  way  of  the  exploration  of  Oregon  by  Americans,  here  was  an 
opportunity  for  them  to  do  so  very  effectively  by  declining  to  fur- 
nish any  information,  and  by  dealing  out  supplies  grudgingly,  and 
only  when  paid  for  at  the  highest  market  rates. 

Turn  now  to  the  testimony  of  (no  longer  Lieutenant)  Hear 
Admii-:il  Charles  Wilkes,  who  being  duly  sworn  at  his  residence,  in 
Chill-lot le,  N.  C,  on  December  31,  18(>(),  testified  as  follows  in  the 
case  of  "The  Puget's  Sound  Agricultural  Co.  vs.  United  States," 
after  testifying  that  he  was  in  command  of  the  United  States  ex- 
ploring expedition  in  Oregon  in  1841: 

"Interrogatory  3.  What  report  of  this  expedition  has  ever  been 
made,  and  by  what  authority  has  it  been  published? 

"Ans.  It  was  made  by  the  direction  of  the  Congress  of  the 
Ignited  States  and  published  by  their  authority,  and  at  the  expense 
of  the  Government. 

"Int.  4.  Was  the  report  so  published  written  by  you;  and  if  so, 
from  what  was  it  prepared? 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  357 

"Ans.  It  was  written  by  me  entire — prepared  from  my  own 
notes  and  from  official  reports  made  by  the  oflBcers  under  me,  in  the 
carrying  out  of  orders  issued  by  me." 

(Idem,  p.  234)     Cross-examination. 

"Cross.  Int.  4.  How  long  after  the  time  you  saw  these  posts  of 
the  company  was  this  report  written? 

"Ans.  I  kept  a  diary  during  the  expedition  of  every  day's  pro- 
ceedings and  occurrences  throughout  the  whole  time  embraced  in 
the  publication,  written  daily,  before  I  retired  to  rest.  It  had  been 
my  practice  long  before  the  expedition,  and  has  been  ever  since." 

(Idem,  p.  238)  "Cross  Int.  18.  Did  you  not  receive  from  the 
oflScers  of  the  Puget's  Sound  Agricultural  Co.  all  the  attention  in 
their  power  and  did  they  not  afford  you  every  facility  that  they 
could  in  carrying  out  the  objects  of  your  expeditions? 

"Ans.  For  the  first  week  I  did  not.  I  understood  from  the  gen- 
tlemen that  they  were  precluded  from  giving  me  aid  until  they  re- 
ceived instructions  from  Vancouver.  Afterward,  in  arranging  my 
traveling  ijarties,  procuring  horses  from  the  Indians,  and  giving 
us  models  and  instructions  for  making  saddles  for  the  horses,  they 
were  very  kind.  As  regards  the  surveying  duties,  they  afforded  me 
no  assistance. 

"Int.  19.  Was  there  any  government  in  the  country  when  you 
were  there? 

"Ans.    There  was  none,  nor  did  I  look  for  any. 

"Int.  20.  How  many  vessels  and  how  large  a  force  of  men  had 
you  while  at  Nisqually? 

"Ans.  A  sloop-of-war  and  a  brig-of-war,  with  two  (2)  launches 
and  some  ten  boats.  The  crews  comprised  upward  of  three  hundred 
(300)  men"  (Cf.  Vol.  8,  Kept.  P.  S.  Agl.  Co.  vs.  U.  S.,  pp.  228-238). 

Turning  to  Vol.  VI.  (Hudson's  Bay  Co.  vs.  United  States)  we 
find  on  p.  289 : 

"Int.  62.  What  opportunities  did  you  have  for  learning  the 
value  of  the  trade  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.? 

"Ans.  I  had  a  great  many  opportunities  of  learning,  in  conver- 
sation, and  eliciting  opinions  in  relation  to  the  then  value  as  well 
as  future  prospects  of  the  trade  in  furs  and  peltries  obtained,  the 
modes  of  trapping,  fitting  out,  discipline,  and  operations  at  their 
various  posts,  the  times  and  seasons  best  suited  for  the  conveyance 
of  the  articles  dealt  in,  both  by  land  and  water,  and  also  informa- 
tion in  regard  to  the  climate  and  the  character  and  numbers  and 
intercourse  with  the  Indians.  Also,  the  emigration  from  the  States 
and  the  condition  in  which  the  parties  arrived  in  the  territory,  to- 
gether with  the  routes  most  practicable  through  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains," and  on  i>.  299  the  following: 


358  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

"Cross  Int.  GO.  Have  you  not  stated,  in  speaking,  in  a  report 
made  by  you  oi"  your  explorations  after  1841,  of  the  members  of  the 
Willamette  Mission  and  Dr.  Mcl.oughliu,  that  'they  invariably  spoke 
of  Dr.  McLoughlin  in  the  highest  terms.  They  were  averse  to  his 
absolute  rule  of  the  whole  territory,  and,  although  it  was  considered 
bv  I  hem  as  despotic,  they  could  not  adduce  any  instance  of  the 
wrong  ai>plication  of  his  power?'" 

"Ans.  The  paragraphs  quoted  are  to  be  understood  as  referring 
to  the  moneyed  i)ower  which  Dr.  McLoughlin,  being  at  the  head  of 
the  Hudson's  l>ay  Co.,  could  give  or  withhold  at  his  pleasure.  In 
some  cases  he  thought  proper  to  extend  a  helping  hand  or  afford 
means  to  settlers,  while  in  other  cases  he  denied  it.  This  was  cal- 
culated to  ])roduce  a  great  deal  of  ill  feeling,  as  well  as  good  feel- 
ing. 

"Int.  Gl.  Have  you  not  also  stated  at  the  same  time  and  in  the 
same  report,  speaking  of  the  settlers,  that  the  settlers  are  also  de- 
terred from  crimes,  as  the  company  has  the  power  of  sending  them 
to  Canada  for  trial? 

"Ans.  I  have  stated  so;  and  this  applies  to  those  settlers  who 
woio  formerly  in  the  service  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 

•Int.  G2.  So  far  as  your  knowledge  extends,  has  Dr.  McLoughlin 
extended  to  newcomers  and  settlers,  of  good  character,  every  facil- 
ity in  his  power  and  also  invariably  given  them  the  use  of  cattle, 
horses,  farming  implements  and  supplies,  to  facilitate  their  opera- 
tions until  such  time  as  they  are  able  to  provide  for  themselves? 

"Ans.  I  think  he  has.  All  cases  of  any  misunderstanding  be- 
tween himself  and  settlers,  that  came  to  my  knowledge,  proved  his 
lil»orality  and  solicitude  for  their  welfare. 

"Int.  G:i.  Did  not  the  officers  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  afford  to 
yourself  and  the  ofticers  under  your  command  every  facility  within 
their  power  to  further  the  exploration  in  which  you  were  engaged? 

"Ans.    I  think  they  did,  sir." 

Ifleni,  ]).  1^01,  the  following  is  of  interest,  though  not  bearing 
strictly  on  the  matter  now  immediately  under  discussion: 

"Reexamination." 

"Int.  5.  Whether  or  no  you  ever  at  any  time  before  1847  made 
any  estimate  of  the  value  of  all  the  posts  and  trade  of  the  Hudson's 
]?ay  Co.  south  of  the  40th  degree  of  north  latitude;  if  so,  state  un- 
der what  circumstances  you  made  it,  and  what  it  was? 

"Ans.  I  made  such  an  estimate  at  the  suggestions  of  many  per- 
sons comiectiMl  with  the  Government  and  Congress,  and  to  Sir  George 
Siiiii>s(>n  (luring  ii  visit  of  his  to  Washington.  I  think  this  visit  wfis 
about  the  year,  184(5,  i)rior  to  or  about  the  time  of  the  making  of  the 
treaty.  The  amount  I  estimated  them  to  be  worth  was  a  half  million 
dollars  for  all  the  jjosts  of  Hudson's  Bay  and  Puget's  Sound  Com- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  359 

panies.  Sir  George  Simpson  thought  it  ought  to  be  a  million.  I 
told  him  that  it  might  be  so,  but  advised  him  to  get  that  sum  in- 
serted in  the  treaty,  for  I  thought  that  if  he  left  it  out  of  the  treaty 
he  might  get  much  less." 

Turning  now  to  his  great  five  volume  report  published  in  1845, 
let  us  read  a  few  of  the  many  acknowledgments  therein  of  the 
kindness  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. — not  of  Dr.  McLoughlin  at  Fort 
Vancouver  alone,  but  at  every  post  of  the  company  they  visited  and 
every  oflScer  they  encountered.  Vol.  IV.,  p.  30:  "On  the  13th  of 
May,  Mr.  Anderson,  in  charge  at  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  post  of 
Nisqually,  was  kind  enough  to  present  me  with  two  bullocks  for  the 
crews  and  a  quantity  of  vegetables,  for  which  we  felt  ourselves  much 
indebted.  A  large  supply  of  milk  was  also  sent  to  us  daily  from 
the  dairy  and  many  other  little  kindnesses  and  attentions  were 
manifested." 

(Vol.  IV.,  p.  310)  "Mr,  Anderson's  kindnesses  had  obviated 
many  of  these  obstacles." 

(Vol.  IV.,  p.  315)  "We  were  kindly  received  by  Mr.  Forrest,  the 
superintendent"  (/.  e.,  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  farm  on  the  Cow- 
litz), "who  quickly  made  arrangements  for  canoes  to  carry  us  down 
the  Cowlitz  and  Columbia  rivers  to  Astoria  or  Fort  George.  He 
also  provided  us  with  an  excellent  repast  and  pressed  us  to  remain 
over  night." 

{Idem,  p.  320)  Describing  their  arrival  at  Astoria:  "Mr.  Bir- 
nie,  the  agent  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  met  us  at  the  landing  with 
lanterns  and  every  assistance,  and  gave  us  a  truly  Scotch  welcome. 
We  soon  found  ourselves  in  his  quarters,  where  in  a  short  time  a 
fire  was  burning  brightly,  and  his  hospitable  board  spread  with 
good  cheer,  although  it  was  past  midnight." 

{Ideyri,  p.  323)  "The  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  oflicers  possess  and 
exert  a  most  salutary  influence,  endeavoring  to  preserve  peace  at 
all  hazards.  It  is  now  quite  safe  for  a  man  to  pass  in  any  direction 
through  the  part  of  the  country  where  their  posts  are." 

{Idem.,  p.  327)  Describing  Vancouver,  he  says:  "Between  the 
steps  are  two  old  cannons  on  sea  carriages,  with  a  few  shot,  to  speak 
defiance  to  the  natives,  who  no  doubt  look  upon  these  as  very  for- 
midable weapons  of  destruction.  I  mention  these,  as  they  are  the 
only  warlike  instruments  to  my  knowledge  that  are  within  the  pick- 
ets of  Vancouver,  which  differs  from  all  the  other  forts  in  having  no 
bastions,  galleries  or  loop-holes."  ...  On  their  arrival  at  Van- 
couver they  found  Dr.  McLoughlin  absent,  but  "only  a  few  minutes 
elapsed  before  Dr.  McLoughlin  came  galloping  up.  He  gave  us  that 
kind  reception  we  had  been  led  to  expect  from  his  well-known  hos- 
pitality.    ,     .     .     He  at  once  ordered  dinner  for  us,  and  we  soon 


3G0  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

felt  ourselves  at  home,  having  comfortable  rooms  assigned  us  and 
being  treated  as  part  of  the  establishment." 

{Idem,  p.  328)  ''All  goods  are  sold  at  Vancouver  at  80  per  cent, 
advance  on  the  London  prime  cost;  .  .  .  but  at  the  other  posts 
it  is  about  100  per  cent,  to  cover  the  extra  expense  of  transporta- 
tion." 

(Idem,  p.  331)  .  .  .  "All  the  above-named  missionaries  ex- 
cept the  Methodists  came  across  the  Rocky  Mountains;  they  repre- 
sented the  ])ass  through  them  as  by  no  means  difficult,  and  that  they 
had  entertained  no  apprehension  of  the  hostile  Indians.  They  had 
accompanied  a  party  of  fur  traders  from  St.  Louis,  and  gave  a  de- 
plorable account  of  the  dissipation  and  morals  of  the  party.  Messrs. 
Griflith  and  rinrke  (should  be  Griffen  and  Clark.— W.  I.  M.)  were 
entirely  disappointed  in  finding  self-sui)port  here,  and  had  it  not 
been  for  the  kindness  of  Dr.  McLoughlin,  who  took  them  in,  they 
would  have  suffered  much.  They  were  advised  to  settle  themselves 
on  the  Faulitz  Plains,  where  I  understand  they  have  since  taken  land 
and  succeeded  in  acquiring  quite  respectable  farms."  ...  "I 
was  introduced  to  several  of  the  missionaries.  .  .  .  They,  for 
the  most  part,  make  Vancouver  their  home,  where  they  are  kindly 
received  and  well  entertained  at  no  expense  to  themselves.  The 
liberality  and  freedom  from  sectarian  principles  of  Dr.  McLoughlin 
may  be  estimated  from  his  being  thus  hospitable  to  missionaries  of 
so  many  Protestant  denominations,  although  he  is  a  professed  Cath- 
olic, and  has  a  priest  of  the  same  faith  officiating  daily  at  the 
chai)el." 

(Idem,  p.  333)  "Wherever  the  operations  of  the  company  ex- 
tend they  have  opened  the  way  to  future  emigration,  provided  the 
means  necessary  for  the  success  of  the  emigrants  and  rendered  its" 
(the  country's)  "peaceable  occupation  an  easy  and  cheap  task." 

(Idem,  p.  341)  "On  the  3d  of  June  we  made  arrangements  for 
leaving  Vancouver  and  proceeding  up  the  Willamette;  but  the 
weather  was  so  stormy  that  we  deferred  our  de])arture  until  the  fol- 
lowing day.  Dr.  McLoughlin  had  kindly  furnished  us  with  a  large 
boat,  and  although  we  had  provided  ourselves  with  provisions,  we 
found  in  her  a  large  basket  filled  with  everything  that  travelers 
could  need  or  kindness  suggest." 

(Idem,  p.  343)  "There  was  a  petty  dispute  between  Rev.  Mr. 
Waller  and  the  company,  and  he  complained  of  them.  It  seems  that 
the  company  i-efuses  to  buy  any  beaver  skins  except  from  the  hunt- 
ers and  trappers,  and  he  accuses  them  of  monopoly  in  consequence. 
The  company,  on  the  other  hand,  say  that  they  have  no  idea  of  sell- 
ing goods  out  of  their  own  stores  for  the  })urpose  of  enabling  others 
to  (Miter  into  competition  with  them;  and  that  they  will  spare  no 
exjKMise  to  keej)  the  trade  as  long  as  they  can  in  their  hands.    This 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  361 

is  certainly  not  unfair.  I  cannot  help  feeling  that  it  is  quite  un- 
suited  to  the  life  of  a  missionary  to  be  entering  into  trade  of  any 
kind.  To  embark  in  traffic  must,  I  think,  tend  to  destroy  the  use- 
fulness of  a  missionary,  or  divert  his  attention  from  the  great  cause 
in  which  he  is  engaged.  ...  I  am  disposed  to  think  that  any 
complaints  against  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  for  endeavoring  to  keep 
the  trade  in  their  own  hands  come  with  an  ill  grace  from  the  mem- 
bers of  a  mission  who  are  daily  receiving  the  kindest  attentions 
and  hospitality  from  its  officers." 

{Idem,  p.  393)  "In  taking  leave  of  Mr.  Ogden,  I  must  express 
the  great  indebtedness  I  am  under  for  his  attentions  and  kindness 
to  Mr.  Drayton,  as  well  as.  for  the  facility  he  offered  him  for  ob- 
taining information  during  their  progress  up  the  Columbia.  I  am 
also  under  obligations  to  him  for  much  interesting  information 
respecting  this  country,  which  he  gave  without  hesitation  or  reserve. 
He  was  anxious  Mr.  Drayton  should  accompany  him  to  Okanagan. 

{Idem,  p.  395)  "As  respects  the  success  of  the  missionary  la- 
bors, it  is  very  small  here"  (/.  e.,  at  Wailatpu). 

{Idem,  p.  401)  "By  the  kindness  of  Mr.  McKinlay  (chief  trader 
in  charge  of  Fort  Walla  Walla)  and  by  the  direction  of  Mr.  Ogden, 
Mr.  Drayton  found  himself  fitted  with  good  horses  and  every  con- 
venience requisite  for  the  journey,  besides  a  quantity  of  provisions." 

Lieut.  Johnson's  party  had  gone  east  from  Puget's  Sound  to  the 
Columbia  over  a  region  previously  wholly  unexplored  and  nearly 
in  the  center  line  east  and  west  of  that  part  north  and  west  of  the 
Columbia,  which  was  the  only  part  really  in  dispute  between  the 
United  States  and  Great  Britain  after  1824,  and  their  reception  at 
Colvile  is  thus  stated. 

{Idem,  p.  440)  "They  (/.  c.  part  of  Johnson's  party)  reached 
Fort  Colvile  late  in  the  afternoon,  and  were  all  soon  made  to  forget 
the  fatigues  of  the  journey  by  the  kind  attentions  of  Messrs.  Mc- 
Donald and  Maxwell,  who  had  charge  of  the  post." 

{Idem,  p.  443)  "Lieut.  Johnson  having  reached  Fort  Colvile 
with  his  i)arty,  it  was  determined  that  they  should  spend  three  days 
there,  not  only  to  refresh  their  horses,  but  to  repair  the  damages 
which  their  saddles  and  packs  had  received.  For  these  purposes 
Mr.  McDonald  afforded  every  facility  in  his  power,  besides  supply- 
ing all  their  wants,  and  received  in  payment  of  the  articles  he  fur- 
nished Lieut.  Johnson's  orders  upon  the  ship,  to  be  collected  through 
the  authorities  at  Vancouver." 

{Idem,  p.  450)  "Of  the  more  northern  parts  of  the  Oregon  Ter- 
ritory" (?.  e.,  north  of  49  degrees),  "through  the  kindness  of  the 
officers  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  I  obtained  much  interesting  infor- 
mation, little  of  which  has,  I  believe,  been  yet  communicated  to  the 
public." 


362  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

{Idem,  p.  454)  "On  the  19th  (June,  1841)  Lieut.  Johnson  was 
preparinfi'  to  depart,  witli  his  pnrty,  liavin^  i-orniited  liis  horses 
and  mended  his  accoiitrenients.  The  kindness  of  Messrs.  McDonald 
and  Maxwell  supplied  all  their  wants,  and  enabled  the  party  to 
leave  Colvile  in  a  better  state  than  they  had  orifiinally  departed 
I'roni  Nisipially.  To  these  gentlemen  my  thanks  are  esi)ecially  due 
for  their  attention  to  the  officers,  who  all  spoke  in  high  terms  of  the 
kindness  they  received.  After  their  departure  they  found  that  the 
ladies  of  the  establishment  had  been  equally  mindful  of  their  com- 
forts, in  not  only  tilliuii'  I  heir  haversacks,  but  in  supplying  them 
with  moccasins." 

{fdcin,  p.  4(53)  "They''  (/.  c,  part  of  Lieut.  Johnson's  party) 
"reached  Walla  Walla  before  dark  and  were  kindly  Avelcomed  by 
Mr.  McLean,  one  of  the  company's  clerks,  who  was  in  charge  of  that 
post." 

{Idem,  p.  4(18)  "On  the  4th  of  July  they"  (/.  e.,  Lieut.  Johnson's 
party)  "left  the  fort  and  crossed  the  river.  .  .  .  Mr.  McLean's 
kindness  and  attention  were  similar  to  that  already  met  with,  and 
he  provided  them  with  necessary  horses,  provisions,  etc." 

{Idon,  ]).  470)  "On  the  15th"  (July)  "reached  Nisqually,  all 
well,  having  performed  the  journey  of  about  1, ()()()  miles."  .  .  . 
"They  traversed  a  route  which  white  men  had  never  before  taken, 
thus  enabling  us  to  become  ac<piainted  with  a  portion  of  the  coun- 
try about  which  all  had  before  been  conjecture.*' 

(Vol.  v.,  ]).  123)  "Soon  after  the  wreck  of  the  Peacock,  Capt. 
Hudson.  hearJTig  that  Dr.  McLoughlin  was  in  want  of  hands  to  aid 
him  in  the  hai-vest,  dis])atclied  the  Kanakas  (/.  e.,  Sandwich  Island- 
ers) belonging  to  the  Peacock  up  to  Vancouver  to  assist  in  gather- 
ing it  in.  It  afforded  some  little  pleasure  to  contribute  this  aid,  and 
thus  in  some  small  degree  to  repay  the  attentions  and  kindness  of 
the  comi>any's  officers."  .  .  .  "The  articles  necessary  for  this 
I)urpose  (/.  €.,  the  repairs  of  the  brig  Oregon),  which  we  ourselves 
were  not  able  to  supply,  were  cheerfully  furnished  us  at  reasonable 
prices  from  the  stores  and  workshops  of  the  com])any.  Indeed, 
nothing  could  exceed  the  kind  attentions  that  were  lavished  ui>on 
us;  and  the  moment  we  expressed  a  desire  it  was  immediately  com- 
plied with."  .  .  .  "It  will  be  remembered  that  Passed  Midship- 
men Eld  and  Colvocoressis  were  ordered  to  make  a  journey  through 
the  Chickeeles  country  to  Gray's  Harbor,  just  as  the  ship  was  get- 
ting under  way  from  Nisqually,  and  that  circumstances  rendered 
their  departure  more  hurried  than  it  was  desirable  it  should  be. 
P.ut  through  the  kindness  of  Mr.  Anderson  and  ra])ts.  McNeil  and 
Scarborough"  (all  three  lludscm's  Bay  Co.'s  officers. — W.  I.  M.), 
"the  party  was  not  left  in  want  of  anything  very  material." 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  3G3 

(Idem,  p.  13G)  .  .  .  The  number  of  posts  occupied  by  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  this  territory  is  twenty-five.  (This  includes 
those  west  of  the  Rockies  between  49  deg.  and  54  deg.  40  min. — W. 
I.  M. ) .  These  are  located  at  the  best  points  for  fur  trade,  and  so  as 
to  secure  the  resort  of  the  Indians  without  interfering  with  their 
usual  habits.  Places  are  also  occupied  in  the  vicinity  of  their 
abodes  during  the  most  favorable  part  of  the  year  for  obtaining  the 
proceeds  of  their  hunting.  This  is  regulated  with  much  skill,  and 
the  portion  of  the  country  once  under  their  care  is  never  suffered 
to  become  exhausted  of  furs ;  for  whenever  they  discover  a  decrease 
the  ground  is  abandoned  for  several  years  until  the  animals  have 
time  to  increase  again.  A  charge  has  been  made  against  the  com- 
pany that  they  were  desirous  of  exterminating  the  beaver  south  of 
the  Columbia,  and  would  continue  to  hunt  them  until  every  fur- 
bearing  animal  was  exhausted.  This  from  the  information  I  re- 
ceived I  believe  to  be  erroneous ;  the  story  has  probably  proceeded 
from  feelings  of  rivalry  on  the  part  of  those  who  spread  the  repo»t. 
Another  charge  made  against  them  of  exciting  attacks  on  the  free 
trappers,  who  are  generally  from  our  borders,  is  to  be  received  with 
many  allowances.  It  has  been  made  in  many  cases  from  interested 
motives,  and  I  am  satisfied  that  nothing  of  this  kind  could  ema- 
nate from  Vancouver  or  from  any  of  the  officers. 

"The  whole  conduct  of  Dr.  McLoughlin  is  totally  at  variance 
with  such  a  course;  every  facility  has  been  at  all  times  extended  to 
newcomers  and  settlers;  it  is  sufficient  that  they  are  of  good  char- 
acter, and  the  use  of  cattle  and  horses,  farming  utensils  and  sup- 
lies  is  invariably  extended  to  facilitate  their  operations  until  such 
time  as  they  are  able  to  provide  for  themselves. 

"During  our  stay  at  Vancouver  I  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing 
many  members  of  the  Wallamette  Missions"  (/.  e.,  the  Methodist 
Mission. — W.  I.  M.),  "but  they  were  unable  to  give  me  much  infor- 
mation. They  invariably  spoke  of  Dr.  McLoughlin  in  the  highest 
terms.  They  were  averse  to  his  absolute  rule  over  the  whole  terri- 
tory, and  although  it  was  considered  by  them  as  despotic,  they  could 
not  adduce  any  instance  of  the  wrong  application  of  his  power.  He 
is,  notwithstanding,  extremely  unpopular  among  all  classes  of  our 
countrymen,  but  for  what  reason  it  is  difficult  to  conceive." 

Idem,  p.  147,  contains  the  following  letter  from  Wilkes  to  Dr. 
McLoughlin  and  Mr.  Douglas,  dated  V.  S.  Brig  Porpoise,  Baker's 
Bay,  October  5,  1841 : 

"Gentlemen :  My  last  duty  before  leaving  the  Columbia  I  feel 
to  be  that  of  expressing  to  you  my  sincere  thanks  for  the  important 
aid  and  facilities  which  you  have  afforded  the  expedition  on  all  oc- 
casions for  carrying  out  the  object  of  our  visit  to  this  part  of  the 
world;  and  be  assured  it  will  ])rove  a  very  pleasant  ])art  of  my  duty 


:{(;4  ACQllIfilTION    OF    OREGOX 

to  make  a  due  representation  of  it  to  my  Government.  Your  per- 
sonal kindness  and  friendly  attentions  to  myself  and  officers  from 
our  tirst  arrival  have  laid  me  under  many  obligations,  which  I  trust 
it  may  be  at  some  future  day  in  our  power  to  return,"  and  he  adds: 
,  .  ,  "At  the  same  time  I  wrote  a  letter  to  our  Government, 
informing  them  of  the  assistance  we  had  received,  stating  the  ser- 
vices these  gentlemen  had  rendered  us,  and  asking  that  an  expres- 
sion of  acknowledgnient  might  be  made  through  the  British  Min- 
ister at  A\'ashington  to  the  directors  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in 
England."  The  letter  to  our  Government  was  dated  October  31, 
1841,  and  is  as  follows: 

"U.  S.  Ship  Vincennes,  Port  of  San  Francisco, 

''Upper  Gal.,  Oct.  31,  1841. 

''Sir:  It  becomes  my  pleasing  duty  to  make  known  to  the  Gov- 
ernment j)revious  to  leaving  the  northwest  coast  of  America  the 
strong  obligations  we  feel  for  the  many  kind  attentions  and  courte- 
sies which  we  have  received  from  John  McLoughlin,  Esq.,  Chief 
Factor  of  the  Hon.  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  at  Fort  Vancouver,  and  to  all 
the  otlicers  of  the  honorable  company  with  whom  we  have  had  in- 
tercourse in  the  prosecution  of  the  duties  in  the  Oregon  Territory 
required  by  my  instructions. 

"These  gentlemen  have  done  everything  to  facilitate  our  opera- 
tions by  the  prompt  attentions  and  liberal  su])plies  rendered  the 
officers  and  crew  of  the  late  U.  S.  ship  Peacock  on  the  occasion  of 
her  wreck  on  the  bar  of  the  Columbia,  and  also  in  the  outfit  of  the 
T".  S.  Brig  Oregon,  for  which  I  view  the  expedition  greatly  indebted, 
having  enabled  me  to  carry  my  instructions  more  promptly  and 
fully  into  effect. 

"I  cannot  but  consider  the  Government  in  duty  bound  to  make 
a  proper  expression  to  the  Hon.  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  through  the  Brit- 
ish Minister  at  Washington,  for  the  liberal  services  rendered,  which 
I  beg  leave  to  assure  you  would  be  extremely  gratifying  to  my  feel- 
ings and  duly  appreciated  by  them. 

"T  have  the  honor  to  be,  sir,  most  respectfully,  your  obedient 
servant, 

(Signed)     "CHAS.  WILKES." 

For  other  acknowledgments  by  Lieut.  Wilkes  of  kindness  re- 
ceived from  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  officers,  Cf.  Vol.  IV.,  pp.  322, 
320,  3(;4,  3G9,  372,  404,  419,  433,  434,  445,  494,  and  Vol.  V.,  pp.  135, 
130.) 

Before  parting  with  Lieut.  Wilkes  it  seems  proper  to  take  up 
the  account  of  the  building  of  the  first  small  ship  in  Oregon,  as 
published  in  "Transactions  of  Oregon  Pioneer  Assn."  for  1891,  pp. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  365 

181-192,  and  compare  it  with  Wilkes'  account  of  the  matter  as  far 
as  he  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  were  concerned  in  the  matter. 

In  the  "Transactions"  as  above  is  a  letter  (undated,  but  which 
seems  to  have  been  written  somewhere  about  1880),  to  Hon.  J.  W. 
Nesmith,  by  Joseph  Gale,  one  of  the  little  company  who  helped  to 
build  "The  Star  of  Oregon"  in  1841,  and  who  in  September,  1842, 
as  captain,  with  a  crew  of  four  men  and  a  little  Indian  boy  and  one 
passenger,  sailed  the  schooner  Star  (48  ft.  8  in.  on  the  keel  and  10 
ft.  9  in.  on  the  beam)  from  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  to  San  Fran- 
cisco. 

The  letter  is  too  long  to  quote  in  full  and  I  will  only  quote  such 
parts  as  are  necessary  to  consider  in  connection  with  the  attitude 
of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  toward  Americans  in  Oregon. 

(Trans.,  p.  181)  "This  is  intended  only  as  a  synopsis  of  the  fol- 
lowing transactions : 

"It  was  not  until  the  latter  part  of  the  summer  of  1840  that  the 
spirit  of  American  enterprise  began  to  manifest  itself  in  Oregon. 
Previous  to  that  it  appeared  to  be  dead;  but,  instead,  it  was  only 
inactive  for  the  want  of  something  to  arouse  it  into  action.  Among 
the  desiderata  of  the  country  were  horses  and  cattle.  It  is  true  that 
there  were  quite  a  number  of  cattle  in  the  valley,  and  these  were 
held  by  Ewing  Young,  the  Methodist  Mission  and  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.,  and  with  such  tenacity  that  it  was  next  to  an  impossibility  to 
purchase  them  at  any  reasonable  price.  The  want  of  these  were 
severely  felt  by  nearly  every  settler  in  the  Wallamet  Valley.  How 
to  better  our  cases  by  supplying  ourselves  with  such  animals  was  a 
question  that  troubled  and  puzzled  us  all. 

"Consequent  upon  our  deficiency  was  the  question  of  the  practi- 
cability of  building  a  vessel  and  sail  her  to  California  and  there 
dispose  of  her  for  stock.  This  proposition  was  favorably  received 
and  thoroughly  discussed  pro  and  con.  The  result  was  an  organiza- 
tion of  a  company  of  the  following-named  men  for  that  purpose, 
viz. :  John  Canan,  Ralph  Kilbourn,  Pleasant  Armstrong,  Henry 
Woods,  George  Davis  and  Jacob  Green.  These  men  secured  the  ser- 
vices of  Felix  Hathaway,  an  excellent  ship  carpenter,  to  lay  out, 
assist  and  superintend  the  work  generally.  They  all  shortly  after 
got  their  tools,  provisions,  etc.,  together  and  descended  the  Wal- 
lamet River  to  near  its  junction  with  the  Columbia,  and  there,  on 
the  east  side  of  Swan  Island,  selected  a  site  upon  which  to  build 
their  vessel.  ...  (p.  182).  "The  work  went  rapidly  on,  not- 
withstanding the  opposition  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  which  had 
been  anticipated.  .  .  .  It  is  not  pertinent  to  this  narrative  to 
dwell  (p.  183)  upon  the  treatment  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  us. 
Sufifice  it  to  say  that  they  did  all  they  could  to  deter  us  from  the 
work;  but  it  went  on  until  completed  in  spite  of  them.     And  had 


3G6  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

it  not  been  for  Captain  Wilkes,  in  all  probability  we  would  have 
been  oblij^ed  to  lay  the  vessel  up  on  account  of  not  bein<^  able  to 
l.idcure  cordage  and  canvas  for  rigging  and  sails. 

•lie  interviewed  Dr.  McLotighlin  on  the  subject  pretty  roughly. 
'I'lic  doctor  excused  himself  by  saying  that  he  thought  they  were 
niiiiviiig  a  colTin  for  themselves,  for,  said  he,  'There  is  Gale  at  the 
head,  who  has  been  in  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  for  several  years  as  a 
hunter  and  trajjjier,  and  what  does  he  or  the  rest  of  them  know 
about  the  managing  and  tiavigating  of  a  vessel  at  sea?'  'Never 
mind,'  said  or  retorted  the  cajjlain,  '1  have  seen  enough  to  convince 
me  that  he  knows  what  he  is  about,  and  if  you  have  such  things  as 
they  need  you  will  oblige  not  only  me,  but,  I  believe,  every  Ameri- 
can in  the  country,  by  letting  them  have  them,  and  should  they  not 
be  able  to  ]»ay  you  for  them,  and  as  T  shall  want  a  considerable 
amount  of  such  things  myself,  you  may  charge  the  aggregated 
amount  to  me  and  I  will  settle  the  same  with  you.'  'Oh,  well,  well,' 
said  the  doctoi-,  'they  can  have  as  much  of  cordage  and  other  ma- 
terials as  they  wish.' 

"So  the  store,  through  Commodore  Wilkes'  influence,  was  thrown 
oj)en  to  us;  but,  alas,  the  season  was  too  far  advanced  for  us  to  get 
the  vessel  in  readiness  to  make  the  ])assage  that  fall.  We,  never- 
theless, while  the  chances  of  getting  those  things  were  so  favorable, 
and  for  fear  that  after  the  Commodore  would  leave  the  river 
might  shut  down  on  us  again,  purchased  an  ample  supply  of  all  the 
necessaries  we  needed,  such  as  cordage,  canvas,  paints,  oils,  etc., 
etc.,  for  which  we  ])aid  the  company  in  wheat  and  furs  of  different 
kinds,  and  returned  thanks  to  Commodore  Wilkes  for  his  generous 
offer."  .  .  .  (p.  1H4)  "I  received  a  letter  from  Commodore 
Wilkes,  in  which  he  stated  that  he  was  on  the  point  of  leaving  the 
country,  and  that  he  felt  greatly  interested  in  the  successful  issue 
of  our  enterj»ri.se,  and  as  there  was  no  port  or  town  from  which  we 
could  hail  or  clear,  and  that  without  such,  or  papers  to  show  from 
and  to  what  Covernment  we  belonged,  there  would  be  the  proba- 
bility of  having  our  vessel  seized.     And  he  fui'ther  stated: 

"  'If  you  can  convince  me  that  you  understand  navigation,  I  am 
ready  to  furnish  you  with  pa])ers  that  will  be  honored  in  whatever 
poi't  you  may  enter,  for  J  do  not  think  it  advisable  for  you  or  any 
other  person  to  attempt  it  without  an  adequate  knowledge  of  that 
science,  it  niatters  not  in  other  respects  how  good  a  seaman  one 
may  be.' 

"TTow  generous  and  noble  the  old  Commodore.  He  was  perfectly 
right.  Now  foi-  me  to  wait  on  him  in  person  was  out  of  the  ques- 
tion. 1  therefore  called  Kilbourn  and  told  him  to  get  his  pen,  ink 
an<l  papers  and  write  while  1  dictated.  So  we  soon  had  the  follow- 
ing letter  written : 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  367 

^'  'To  Commodore  Charles  Wilkes,  of  the  United  States  Navy. 

"  'Dear  Sir :  I  received  your  very  kind  letter  and  am  very 
thankful  for  the  interest  you  have  taken  in  our  affairs,  but  I  am 
very  sorry  that  I  cannot  see  you  in  person,  owing  to  being  confined 
to  my  bed  by  the  fever  and  ague.  I  acknowledge  the  propriety  of 
your  remarks  in  reference  to  going  to  sea  without  a  knowledge  of 
navigation,  and  also  the  entering  of  a  foreign  port  without  papers 
to  show  from  whence  I  came.  I  do  not,  my  dear  sir,  profess  to  be 
a  consummate  navigator,  yet  I  have  a  sufficient  knowledge  of  that 
science  to  take  a  vessel  to  any  given  port  upon  the  globe,  and,  as  it 
is  almost  impossible  for  me  to  see  you  in  person,  you  will  very  much 
oblige  me  by  proposing  such  questions  which,  should  I  be  able  to 
satisfactorily  answer,  may  convince  you  of  that  fact.  With  much 
respect, 

"  'I  am  your  obliged  and  humble  servant, 

"  'JOSEPH  GALE.' 
"  'To  Commodore  Charles  Wilkes,  of  the  U.  S.  M.' 

"This  letter  was  dispatched  immediately  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Columbia  River  and  delivered  to  the  Commodore.  The  next  morn- 
ing our  boat  started  on  its  return  and  in  three  days  after  I  received 
an  answer  in  which  were  a  few  questions  regarding  the  science  of 
navigation,  which  I  answered  and  dispatched  in  a  second  letter  to 
the  Commodore,  and  on  the  return  of  our  boat  I  was  highly  rejoiced 
to  find  that  my  answers  were  satisfactory.  In  consequence  of  this 
I  received  a  large  document  with  the  United  States  seal  upon  it, 
which  was  the  papers  alluded  to  by  the  Commodore. 

"The  exploring  squadron  left  the  country  a  few  days  afterward. 
The  grand  old  Commodore,  before  leaving,  made  us  a  present  of  a 
flag,  an  ensign,  and  also  a  compass,  a  kedge  anchor,  and  hawser  140 
fathoms  long,  a  log  line  and  two  log  glasses — 14  and  20  second 
glasses.  I  bought  a  quadrant  epitome  and  a  nautical  almanac  from 
Kilbourn,  who  was  Capt.  Couch's  mate,  for  wiiich  I  paid  him  |45. 
These  were  sufficient  for  all  ordinary  purposes." 

It  was  not  till  September  3,  1842,  that  they  were  at  Astoria  ready 
with  their  little  craft  to  try  the  voyage  to  San  Francisco,  and  ad- 
verse winds  prevented  them  from  putting  to  sea  till  September  12, 
and  on  the  17th  of  September  they  reached  their  destination.  They 
sold  the  little  schooner  for  350  cows,  and  the  following  spring  they 
recruited  a  party  of  forty-two  men  for  Oregon,  all  bringing  more  or 
less  stock,  and  May  17,  1843,  started  to  drive  to  Oregon  "1,250  head 
of  cattle,  600  head  of  mares,  horses  and  mules — mares,  horses  and 
colts  principally — and  nearly  5,000  head  of  sheep,  and  after  a  toil- 
some journey  of  seventy-five  days  arrived  in  the  Willamette  Valley 
with  comparatively  small  loss.     The  rest  of  what  disposition  was 


308  ACQi  hSlTlOX    OF    OREGON 

made  of  tliat  stock  is  known,  T  presume,  to  everybody.  There  is  one 
tliin;^  tt'riain,  it  done  away  with  the  stock  monopoly  and  set  the 
people  of  ()rey;on  in  a  fair  way  of  getting  on  in  the  future.  This 
result  was  brought  about  by  the  indomitable  wills  of  a  few  men 
who  are  now  scarcely  known," 

So  much  for  Capt.  Gale's  account,  written  somewhere  near  thirty- 
eight  years  after  the  event,  and  without  any  claim  of  reference  to 
any  contemporaneous  written  diary  or  other  record  of  the  aifair 
except  as  hereinbefore  quoted  and  the  following  two  brief  notes  (pp. 
18(i-7):  "1  penned  the  following  note  to  Mr.  Douglas,  Dr.  Mc- 
Loughlin  being  absent: 

'*  'James  Douglas,  Esq. 

''  'Sir:  As  I  am  now  on  my  way  to  California,  if  you  have  any 
letters  or  conunands  that  you  wish  to  send  to  Mr.  Raj',  residing 
there,  I  will,  with  pleasure,  take  them  to  him. 

"  'Very  respectfully, 

"  'JOSEPH  GALE.' 
"I  received  the  following  answer: 
"  'Mr.  Joseph  Gale. 

'''Sir:  As  the  schooner  Cadborough,  Capt.  Scarborough,  will 
leave  for  that  port  soon  we  will  not  trouble  you  in  that  particular.' 
(His  very  words.) 

"  'Yours,  etc., 

"  'J.  DOUGLAS.' 

"Of  course,  like  the  rest,  he  thought  such  a  thing  as  our  reach- 
ing California  was  all  braggadocio  in  us." 

Tt  is  to  be  observed,  first,  that  naturally  Mr.  Gale  desired  to 
make  the  best  showing  for  himself  throughout  the  transaction;  and 
second,  that  Gale  had  spent  some  years  in  the  Rocky  Mountains  as 
an  American  trapper  before  going  to  Oregon  to  settle  as  Ji  farmer 
and  stock  raiser  (Cf.  Transactions  Oregon  Pioneer  Assn.,  1880,  pp. 
10-12)  and  evidently  had  the  strong  }»rejudice  against  the  Hudson's 
Pay  Co.  resulting  from  that  life,  reinforced  by  hearing  from  1865 
to  1880  the  constant  iteration  and  reiteration  of  the  accusations 
hereinbefore  quoted  against  the  Hudscm's  Pay  Co.  of  Gray  and 
Spalding  and  sundry  other  advocates  of  the  AVhitman  Legend;  and 
third,  that,  though  there  is  no  reason  to  question  his  honesty  and 
tlic  intensity  of  his  j)atriotism,  it  would  seem  from  Wilkes'  account 
of  tin's  same  matter  that  Gale's  recollection  was  not  entirely  trust- 
woi-tliy  aftci-  tlic  lapse  of  thirty-eight  years  as  to  the  cause  of  the 
attitude  of  the  Hudson's  Pay  Co.  toward  them  at  first,  or  as  to  ex- 
actly what  changed  that  attitude  a  little  later. 

Tn  Vol.  TV.  of  Wilkes'  Report,  written  as  he  testified  entirely  by 
him.self,  and  i)ublished  not  thirty-eight,  but  only  four  years  after 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  369 

the  event,  and  prepared  not  from  unassisted  memory,  but  by  con- 
stant relerenee,  not  merely  to  notes,  but  to  a  diary  which  he  testi- 
fied he  always  wrote  up  daily  "before  retiring  to  rest,"  we  find  his 
account  of  this  affair  as  follows : 

(P.  337)  "During  my  stay  at  Vancouver  I  had  a  visit  from 
three  of  a  party  of  eight  young  Americans,  who  were  desirous  of 
leaving  the  country,  but  could  not  accomplish  it  in  any  other  way 
but  by  building  a  vessel.  They  were  not  dissatisfied  with  the  terri- 
tory, but  they  would  not  settle  themselves  down  in  it  because  there 
were  no  young  women  to  marry  except  squaws  or  half-breeds.  They 
informed  me  that  they  were  then  engaged  in  building  a  vessel  on 
Oak  Island,  in  the  Willamette,  where  I  promised  to  visit  them  on 
my  way  up  the  river.  I  found  them  in  difliculty  with  Dr.  McLough- 
lin,  who  had  refused  to  furnish  them  with  any  more  supplies,  in 
consequence,  as  he  stated,  of  their  having  obtained  those  already 
given  them  under  false  pretenses." 

{Idem,  p.  342)  "We  encamped  on  the  island  occupied  by  the 
young  Americans,  of  whom  I  spoke  in  the  preceding  chapter  (p. 
337)  and  close  to  the  place  where  they  were  building  their  vessel. 
The  group  of  which  it  is  one  is  called  the  Oak  Islands. 

"On  landing  we  were  introduced  to  them  all.  They  had  reached 
the  Oregon  country  by  crossing  the  Rocky  Mountains  a  year  before, 
and  worked  on  the  Willamette,  Avhere  they  at  first  proposed  to  set- 
tle themselves;  but  they  found  that  that  was  out  of  the  question, 
as  there  was  little  or  no  prospect  of  their  being  contented,  and  they 
were  now  bent  on  leaving  the  country  at  all  hazards.  Every  one 
with  whom  I  spoke  gave  them  a  good  character,  except  one,  and  I 
found  that  shortly  before  my  visit  he  had  been  turned  out  of  the 
partnership. 

''The  vessel  they  were  building  was  a  small  schooner.  One  of 
their  number  having  served  a  short  time  in  a  ship-yard  in  the  United 
States,  the  rest  were  employed  as  his  assistants,  cutting  timber  and 
preparing  the  plank,  which  they  procured  from  the  cedar  on  the 
bank  of  the  river. 

"I  explained  to  them  the  cause  of  Dr.  McLoughlin's  refusal  to 
assist  them,  which  they  denied  most  positively.  I  then  told  them 
it  was  proper  for  them  to  deny  having  authorized  any  trick  or 
deception,  on  doing  which  I  was  sure  they  would  receive  any  assist- 
ance that  lay  in  the  power  of  Dr.  McLoughlin.  This  they  subse- 
quently did,  and  I  was  informed  that  they  then  received  all  the  aid 
he  had  in  his  power  to  give.  I  tried  to  dissuade  these  young  men 
from  making  their  voyage ;  for  I  found  on  conversing  with  them 
that  not  one  of  them  knew  anything  about  the  sailing  of  a  vessel  or 
navigation. 


370  ACQUISITIOX    OF    OREGON 

••I  therelorc  knew  how  <:;reat  (lanj;ers  lliey  would  experience  on 
till'  voyage,  eNcii  to  Calirornia,  whither  they  intended  to  jjo,  with 
the  iufention  of  taking-  sea-otter  by  the  way  on  the  coast  of  Oregon. 
After  their  arrival  at  San  Francisco  it  was  their  plan  to  sell  their 
vessel  and  cargo,  il'  they  were  fortunate  enough  to  obtain  any;  or, 
if  not,  to  go  down  the  coast  fnrtlier  (p.  343),  wlien  they  would  cross 
over  the  country  and  return  by  the  way  of  Mexico  or  Texas.  It 
gave  nie  much  ])leasure  to  see  the  buoyancy  of  s])irit  so  character- 
istic of  our  countrymen  with  which  they  carried  on  their  plan.  Be- 
fore I  left  the  Columbia  in  September  they  asked  me  for  a  sea  let- 
ter for  their  protection,  at  the  same  time  informing  me  that  their 
vessel  was  launched,  met  their  expectation  and  was  called  the  'Star 
of  Oregon.'  .  .  .  The  next  morning  I  left  the  boat  builders, 
after  assuring  them  that  they  should  have  all  the  assistance  I  could 
give  them  in  their  outtit." 

This  account,  it  will  be  seen,  is  radically  different  from  Gale's, 
and  it  would  ai>i>ear  that  the  decision  not  to  try  and  hunt  sea-otter 
along  the  rock-bound  coast  of  Oregon  (which  with  their  inexperi- 
ence in  navigation  would  almost  certainly  have  meant  the  wreck- 
ing of  their  craft  and  the  ])robable  loss  of  all  on  board),  but  to  go 
to  San  Francisco  and  sell  their  craft  and  return  to  Oregon  with 
stock  and  settle  there  was  an  afterthought  during  the  year  that 
elai)sed  between  the  finishing  of  their  craft  and  their  start  for  Cali- 
fornia, dale's  account  represents  Wilkes  as  calling  McLoughlin  to 
account,  but  ^Vilkes  says  that  he  advised  ilicm  to  go  to  INIcLoughlin 
and  deny  having  authorized  any  trick  or  deception,  and  that  "they 
subsequently  did  this  and  then  received  all  the  aid  he"  (i.  e.,  Mc- 
Loughlin) ''had  it  in  his  power  to  give." 

Perha])s  an  ex])lanation  of  most  of  Gale's  mistakes  lies  in  the 
fact  that  accoi-ding  to  his  own  account  he  was  not  actively  con- 
nected with  the  work  of  building  the  schooner  till  after  she  had 
been  launched  from  the  ways  at  Oak  Island  and  towed  up  the  Wil- 
lamette to  the  falls  to  be  finished  (?.  e.,  till  after  Wilkes'  visit  to 
the  boat-buildei's'  camp),  and  that  the  friction  with  McLoughlin 
was  due  to  some  actions  of  some  of  the  other  seven  men  concerned 
in  the  matter  of  which  ho  was  not  fully  informed. 

Mrs.  Dye  not  only  assutuos  all  of  Gale's  account  to  be  accurate, 
but.  according  to  her  usual  habit,  embellishes  his  tale  with  sundry 
(supposed)  discussions  at  Fort  ^''ancouve^  and  conversations  with 
Dr.  McLoughlin  and  Lieutenant  Wilkes,  duly  inclosed  in  the  quo- 
tation marks,  which  with  her  only  serve  to  show  that  she  has  found 
the  alleged  quotations  in  the  exhaustless  storehouse  of  her  own  re- 
markable imagination  (Cf.  McLoughlin  and  Old  Oregon,  pp.  185- 
198). 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  371 

It  will  be  noticed  that  Gale  accuses  the  Methodist  Mission  with 
aiding  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  keep  up  a  monopoly  of  cattle  in  the 
Willamette.  He  also  mentions  Ewing  Young,  but  as  Young  died 
in  February,  1841,  while  the  "Star"  was  not  launched  till  late  in 
May,  1841,  he  must  certainly  be  left  out  of  the  account.  He  also 
takes  credit  for  breaking  the  monopoly  in  cattle  as  the  result  of  the 
building  of  the  "Star  of  Oregon,"  and  his  daring  voyage  in  her  to 
San  Francisco  with  only  four  men  and  an  Indian  boy  as  crew,  none 
of  whom  knew  anything  about  a  sailor's  duties.  This  totally  ignores 
the  cattle  driven  from  the  States  by  the  1842  party  under  White, 
and  the  much  greater  number — some  1,300  head — brought  by  the 
1843  migration,  which  reached  the  Willamette  only  sixty  days  after 
Gale's  party. 

While  Gale's  party  are  entitled  to  much  credit,  it  would  appear 
therefore  that  their  efforts  were  not  quite  so  indispensable  to  the 
welfare  of  Oregon  as  he  seemed  to  imagine  when,  in  his  old  age,  he 
wrote  what  he  doubtless  intended  for  a  true  account  of  the  building 
of  the  first  sea-going  craft  in  the  Old  Oregon  Territory,  and  of  his 
exploit  in  sailing  her  to  California  and  leading  back  a  party  to 
Oregon  with  horses,  cattle  and  sheep. 

Of  the  experiences  of  the  1842,  1843  and  1845  migrations  at  Fort 
Hall  we  have  written  fully  in  Chapter  V.,  and  have  shown  that, 
according  to  all  the  contemporaneous  statements  of  the  leaders  and 
members  of  those  parties  that  are  known  to  exist,  they  were  all 
kindly  treated  at  that  post,  and  that  there  was  not  the  least  effort 
made  to  prevent  them  from  going  on  to  the  settlements  in  Oregon 
with  wagons.  I  have  found  no  contemporaneous  record  of  the  1844 
party  except  the  diary  of  Rev.  Edw.  E.  Parrish,  who  does  not  say 
one  word  about  their  reception  and  treatment  at  Hall,  Boise,  Walla 
W^alla  or  Vancouver  (Cf.  Transactions  Oregon  Pioneer  Assn.,  1888, 
p.  82). 

Before  we  take  up  the  contemporaneous  testimony  of  the  leaders 
and  members  of  those  parties  as  to  their  reception  and  treatment  at 
Walla  Walla  and  Vancouver,  let  us  examine  Lieutenant  Fremont's 
report  of  his  second  expedition,  in  1843-4,  and  the  experience  of  the 
scientists  Nuttall  and  Townsend. 

Following  Spalding  (Cf.  Pacific,  November  9,  1865,  and  same  in 
Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  No.  37,  41st  Cong.,  3d  Sess.)  and  Gray  (Cf.  his  ''His- 
tory of  Oregon,"  pp.  200  and  314),  Nixon  (Cf.  "How  Marcus  Whit- 
man Saved  Oregon,"  p.  131)  asserts  that  Fremont  was  detailed  to 
escort  the  1843  migration  (which  they  all  claim  was  under  Whit- 
man's leadership). 

The  claim  that  Fremont  was  to  escort  this  migration  is  as  ri- 
diculous as  all  the  rest  of  the  Whitman  Legend,  for  Fremont's  re- 


372  ACQursirrox  of  oregox 

port  (p.  KXi  of  Sc'u.  Ex.  Doc.  No.  174,  28th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  being 
the  second  page  of  the  report  of  the  second  expedition),  distinctly 
declares  that  "it  was  to  vary  the  route  to  the  Rocky  Mountains  from 
that  of  the  1S42  exiiedition,"  which  had  followed  the  Oregon  trail 
all  the  way  to  the  South  Pass. 

Fi-eniont  did  not  start  from  the  ^lissouri  frontier  till  May  21)th, 
whereas  the  Oregon  migration  had  started  May  22,  and  he  only  kept 
the  Oregon  trail  to  the  crossing  of  the  Kansas  River,  eighty-eight 
miles  from  Tndei)endence,  ]Mo.,  and  then  left  that  trail  and  kept  up 
the  Kansas,  and  then  went  southwest  to  the  Arkansas  Kiver,  and 
did  not  again  reach  the  Oregon  trail  till  7G1  miles  from  Independ- 
ence on  that  trail,  but  1,060  by  the  route  he  had  traveled. 

This  put  him  so  far  behind  the  migration  that  he  did  not  over- 
take its  rear  till  August  22,  on  Bear  River,  and  he  parted  from  it 
on  the  2(>th  at  Soda  S])rings  and  went  to  exi)lore  the  Great  Salt 
Lake,  and  saw  no  more  of  the  migration  until  he  reached  Fort  \yalla 
Walla. 

At  Fort  Hall  he  makes  no  other  mention  of  Mr,  Richard  Grant 
than  this,  under  date  of  September  19,  1843:  ''I  rode  up  to  the 
fort  and  purchased  from  Mr.  Grant  (the  oflScer  in  charge  of  the 
post)  several  very  indifferent  horses  and  five  oxen  in  very  fine  or- 
der." The  migration,  so  vastly  greater  than  was  expected,  had 
strii)])ed  the  fort  of  all  sup])lies  that  could  be  spared  (Cf.  Fremont's 
Report,  p.  149). 

October  8,  1843,  the  expedition  reached  Fort  Boise,  and  Fremont 
thus  states  what  reception  they  encountered : 

"We  were  received  with  an  agreeable  hos])itality  by  Mr.  Payette, 
an  officer  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  charge  of  the  fort ;  all  of  whose 
garrison  consisted  of  a  Canadian  engage."  .  .  .  "Mr.  Payette 
had  made  but  slight  attempts  at  cultivation,  his  efforts  being  lim- 
ited to  raising  a  few  vegetables,  in  which  he  succeeded  tolerabh" 
well,  the  post  being  principally  supported  by  salmon.  He  was  very 
hos])itable  and  kind  to  us,  and  we  made  a  sensible  impression  upon 
all  his  comestildes;  but  our  ])rinci])al  inroad  was  into  the  dairy, 
-which  was  al)undantly  su])]»lied,  stock  appearing  to  thrive  extremely 
well ;  and  we  had  an  unusiial  luxury  in  a  present  of  fresh  butter, 
which  was,  however,  by  no  means  equal  to  that  of  Fort  Hall,  prob- 
ably from  some  accidental  cause." 

October  20,  1843,  they  reached  Fort  Xez  Perce  or  Walla  Walla, 
and  the  re]»ort  says:  "Mr.  McKinlay,  the  commander  of  the  post, 
received  us  with  great  civility;  and  both  to  myself  and  the  heads 
of  the  emigrants  who  were  there  at  the  time,  extended  the  rites  of 
hosi)itality  in  a  comfortable  dinner  to  which  he  invited  us." 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  373 

November  8,  1843,  they  reached  Fort  Vancouver,  and  the  report 
says:  ^'I  immediately  waited  upon  Dr.  McLouohliu,  the  executive 
officer  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  the  territory  west  of  the  Kocky 
Mountains,  who  received  me  with  the  courtesy  and  hospitality  for 
which  he  has  been  eminently  distinguished,  and  which  makes  a 
forcible  and  delightful  impression  on  a  traveler  from  the  long  wil- 
derness from  which  we  had  issued.  I  w^as  immediately  supplied 
by  him  with  the  necessary  stores  and  provisions  to  refit  and  sup- 
port my  party  in  our  contemplated  winter  journey  to  tlie  States; 
and  also  with  a  Mackinaw  boat  and  canoes,  manned  with  Canadian 
and  Iroquois  voyagers  and  Indians,  for  their  transportation  to  The 
Dalles  of  the  Columbia.  In  addition  to  this  efficient  kindness  in 
furnishing  me  with  these  necessary  supplies,  I  received  from  him 
a  warm  and  gratifying  sympathy  in  the  suffering  which  his  great 
experience  led  him  to  anticipate  for  us  in  our  homeward  journey 
and  a  letter  of  recommendation  and  credit  for  any  officers  of  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  into  whose  posts  we  might  be  driven  by  unex- 
pected misfortune. 

"Of  course  the  future  supplies  for  my  party  were  paid  for,  bills 
on  the  Government  of  the  United  States  being  readily  taken ;  but 
every  hospitable  attention  was  extended  to  me,  and  I  accepted  an 
invitation  to  take  a  room  in  the  fort  and  to  make  myself  at  home 
while  I  staid. 

^'I  found  many  American  emigrants  at  the  fort;  others  had  al- 
ready crossed  the  river  into  their  land  of  promise — -the  Willamette 
Valley.  Others  were  daily  arriving,  and  all  of  them  had  been  fur- 
nished with  shelter,  as  far  as  it  could  be  afforded  by  the  buildings 
connected  with  the  establishment.  Necessary  clothing  and  provis- 
ions (the  latter  to  be  afterward  returned  in  kind  from  the  produce 
of  their  labor)  were  also  furnished.  This  friendly  assistance  was 
of  very  great  value  to  the  emigrants,  whose  families  were  otherwise 
exposed  to  much  suffering  in  the  winter  rains,  which  had  now  com- 
menced, at  the  same  time  that  they  were  in  want  of  all  the  com- 
mon necessities  of  life." 

We  have  already  shown  in  Chapter  V.  what  very  material  ser- 
vice Payette  rendered  Fremont  by  informing  him  of  the  easier  pass 
over  the  Blue  Mountains,  of  which  he  had  informed  Farnham  in 
1839.  Next  let  us  see  what  treatment  was  accorded  to  the  two  emi- 
nent naturalists,  Thomas  Nuttall,  a  botanist,  and  John  K.  Town- 
send,  an  ornithologist,  who  went  to  Oregon  with  Wyeth's  second 
party  in  1834. 

In  1839  Mr.  Townsend  published,  in  Philadelphia,  his  "Narrative 
of  a  Journey  Across  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Columbia  River," 
which  was  immediately  republished  in  London,  and  on  p.  109  he 


374  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

thus  describes  llicir  ;iiii\;il  and  reception  at  Fort  Vancouver:  ''On 
the  beach  in  front  of  the  fort  we  were  met  by  Mr.  Lee,  the  mis- 
sionary ( who  had  j>one  on  in  advance  with  his  associates  from  Fort 
Hall),  and  J)r.  Jolin  McLonjililin,  the  Cliief  Factor  and  Governor  of 
the  Hudson's  Bay  posts  in  this  vicinity. 

"Tlie  doctor  is  a  hirge,  dijinified  and  very  noble-lool^ino;  man, 
with  a  tine  expressive  countenance  and  remarlcably  bhmd  and  |)]eas- 
inji  manners.  The  missionaries  introduced  Mr.  Nuttall  and  myself 
in  due  form,  and  we  were  greeted  and  received  with  a  frank  and 
unassuming  politeness  which  was  most  peculiarly  grateful  to  our 
feelings. 

"He  requested  us  to  consider  his  house  our  home,  provided  a 
separate  room  for  our  use,  a  servant  to  wait  upon  us,  and  furnished 
us  with  every  convenience  which  we  could  possibly  wish  for. 

*1  shall  never  cease  to  feel  grateful  to  him  for  his  disinterested 
kindness  to  the  poor,  houseless  and  travel-worn  strangers." 

On  ]).  244  he  writes  thus  of  his  reception  by  Mr.  Pambrun  when 
on  his  way  up  the  Columbia  in  1836  to  explore  the  Blue  Mountains: 
"On  the  evening  of  the  Oth  (of  June)  we  arrived  at  Walla  Walla 
or  Nez  l*erces  Fort,  where  I  was  kindly  received  by  Mr.  Pambrun, 
the  superintendent." 

On  p.  255  he  thus  describes  his  reception  at  Fort  George  (or 
Astoria)  in  September:  ''On  the  24th  I  embarked  in  a  canoe  with 
Indians  for  Fort  George  and  arrived  in  two  days.  Here  I  was 
kindly  received  by  the  superintendent,  Mr.  James  IJirnie,  and  prom- 
ised every  assistance  in  forwarding  my  views." 

On  ]).  2(13  he  writes  thus  of  his  leaving  Fort  Vancouver  for  his 
return  home  via  the  Sandwich  Islands :  "I  took  leave  of  Dr.  Mc- 
Loughlin  with  feelings  akin  to  those  with  which  I  should  bid  adieu 
to  an  affectionate  j)arent;  and  to  his  fervent  'God  bless  you,  sir, 
and  may  you  have  a  happy  meeting  with  your  friends,'  I  could  only 
reply  by  a  look  of  the  sincerest  gratitude.  Words  are  inadequate 
to  express  my  deep  sense  of  the  obligations  which  I  feel  under  to 
this  truly  generous  and  excellent  man,  and  I  fear  I  can  only  repay 
them  by  the  sincerity  with  which  I  shall  always  cherish  the  recol- 
lection of  his  kindness  and  the  ardent  prayers  I  shall  breathe  for 
his  prosperity  and  happiness." 

On  p.  205  he  writes  thus  of  the  treatment  received  from  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  agent  at  Honolulu:  "On  my  arrival  Mr.  George 
Pelly,  agent  of  the  Honorable  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  kindly  invited  me 
to  his  liouse,  where  T  remained  three  days,  and  at  the  end  of  that 
time  Mr.  Jones  i)r()cured  for  me  a  neat  and  very  comfortable  grass 
cottage,  in  which  I  live  like  a  ])rince." 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  375 

Returning  now  to  the  1842  migration.  "Hasting's  Emigrant's 
Guide  to  Oregon  and  California"  (p.  20)  says:  "Arriving  at  Fort 
Boise,  Ave  Avere  very  Iviudly  received  and  entertained  by  tlie  gentle- 
man in  charge,  viiio  kindly  proffered  to  let  us  have  such  provisions 
as  we  needed  and  to  render  us  any  additional  service  in  his  power." 

(P.  27)  After  describing  their  arrival  in  the  lower  settlements 
of  Oregon  he  goes  on :  "The  country  did  not  appear  to  us,  in  real- 
ity, that  delightful  region  which  we  had  thus  long  and  laboriously 
sought.  Dismay  and  dissatisfaction  appeared  to  be  visibly  im- 
pressed upon  every  countenance,  and  deep  discontent  pervaded 
every  breast.  All,  however,  soon  obtained  temporary  residences. 
Dr.  McLoughlin  kindly  proffered  to  render  them  any  assistance  in 
his  power.  He  proposed  to  sell  goods  on  a  credit  to  all  those  who 
were  unable  to  make  immediate  payment.  He  also  commenced 
building  extensively  at  the  falls  of  the  Wallamette,  and  thereby 
gave  immediate  employment,  at  the  highest  wages,  to  all  those  who 
wished  to  labor." 

(P.  51)  "Dr.  McLoughlin,  who  is  Chief  Factor  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.  west  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  is  in  charge"  (/.  e.,  at  Van- 
couver). "He  is  courteous,  intelligent  and  companionable,  and  a 
more  kind,  hospitable  and  liberal  gentleman  the  world  never  saw. 
Every  possible  attention,  kindness  and  hospitality  are  extended  to 
all  who  visit  him,  either  upon  business  or  otherwise;  some  of  whom 
he  invites  to  his  own  table,  where  they  are  treated  with  all  the 
courtesy  and  etiquette  of  English  refinement. 

"For  all  others  a  spacious  apartment  is  provided,  which  is  called 
the  'bachelors'  hall,'  and  which  contains  a  convenient  sitting-room, 
a  dining-room  and  sev^eral  comfortable  lodging  apartments,  all  of 
which  are  provided  expressly  for  those  who  are  not  invited  to  his 
private  table.  Those  who  occupy  the  'bachelors'  hall'  are  also  fur- 
nished with  all  the  luxuries  of  the  fort,  servants  are  in  readiness  to 
give  them  any  attention,  and,  although  they  remain  for  weeks,  or 
even  months  together,  as  many  have,  the  kindness,  attention  and 
hospitality  of  the  doctor  are  still  unremittingly  bestowed.  But  the 
kindness  and  hospitality  of  this  gentleman  do  not  end  here,  for 
when  his  guests  wish  to  return  to  their  homes  a  cart  with  servants 
is  sent  to  convey  their  baggage  or  goods  to  the  river,  and  all  this, 
too,  without  promise  or  hope  of  reward.  A  Mr.  James  Douglas, 
who  is  occasionally  in  charge  of  this  fort  in  the  absence  of  the  doc- 
tor, is  also  an  intelligent  gentleman,  and  is  alike  courteous,  kind 
and  hospitable  as  the  doctor. 

(P.  58)  "A  kindness  and  hospitality  exist,  among  those  pio- 
neers of  the  west,  which  are  almost  unparalleled.  Upon  the  arrival 
of  emigrants  in  the  country  immediate  arrangements  are  made  by 


•Air,  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

the  loniier  settlers  to  provide  them  with  houses  and  provisions,  and 
every  aid  is  rendered  them  in  makinfj  their  selection  of  lands  and 
procni-in«i:  honses  for  themselves.  The  doctor,  McLoujihlin,  also 
allords  them  every  aid  in  his  jtower,  furnishin<>-  Ihem  with  goods 
and  teams  npon  a  credit,  if  they  are  unable  to  make  immediate 
payment,  ])rovidinfi:  them  with  wheat  for  their  bread  and  seed  and 
receiving  wheat  the  next  year  in  payment,  and  letting  them  have 
cows  and  other  cattle,  to  be  returned  in  such  kind  as  shall  be  agreed 
ui»(m.  with  a  portion  of  the  increase.  This  kindness  and  generosity 
of  ilic  doctor  are  not  confined  to  emigrants  upon  their  arrival 
merely,  but  they  are  extended  to  every  settler  and  respectable  in- 
habitant in  all  the  various  ]»ortions  of  the  country." 

I  M-.  I'Jijah  ^^'hite,  sub-Indian  Agent,  in  his  rei)ort  to  the  Com- 
missioner of  Indian  Alfairs,  dated  April  1,  1843,  says:  "I  think  I 
mentioned  the  kind  and  hospitable  manner  we  were  received  and 
entertained  on  the  way  by  the  gentlemen  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co., 
and  the  cordial  and  most  handsome  rece])tion  T  met  with  at  Fort 
\'anc()uver  from  (Jov.  McTiOughlin  and  his  worthy  associate  Chief 
Factor,  James  Douglas,  Esq." 

^^'e  have  already  in  Cha})ter  V.  discussed  the  account  of  the  mi- 
gration of  1843,  in  George  \Vilkes'  ''History  of  Oregon,"  based  on 
Burnett's  letters,  and  quoted  its  account  of  the  kindness  to  it  of 
Cai)tain  Richard  Crrant,  the  Hudson's  P>ay  officer  in  charge  of  Fort 
Hall. 

Of  their  reception  at  Fort  Boise  nothing  is  said,  biit  of  their 
treatment  at  Forts  Walla  Walla  and  Vanccmver  Burnett  Avrote  as 
follows:  ((ieo.  Wilkes,  ]>.  J)0  i  "We  found  Mr.  McKinlay,  a  very 
intelligent  Scotchman,  in  charge  of  this  post,  and  at  his  hands  re- 
ceived every  civility  and  attention." 

'  (Idem,  p.  03)  He  thus  describes  his  arrival  and  reception  at 
Fort  Vancouver:  "On  my  arrival  I  was  received  with  great  kind- 
ness by  Doctor  McLoughlin  and  Mr.  James  Douglas,  the  second  in 
command.  They  both  tendered  me  the  hospitalities  of  the  fort, 
whicli  oiler,  it  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say,  1  accepted  willingly 
and  with  pleasure.  Dr.  McLoughlin  is  the  Governor  or  Chief  Factor 
of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  a  situation  most  difficult  and  arduous  in 
its  duties,  and  recpuring  most  consummate  ability  in  the  person 
as])iriTig  to  fill  it.  The  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  have  been  most  fortunate 
in  their  selection  of  Dr.  McLoughlin  for  this  important  trust.  Pos- 
sessed of  a  commanding  person,  a  refined,  benevolent  and  amiable 
mannei*;  owning  extensive  acquirements  drawn  from  study,  ti'avel 
and  intercourse  with  mankind;  a  ])rofoun(l  knowledge  of  human 
nature,  and  withal  a  firmness  that  insured  obedience  and  respect, 
he  is  peculiarly  (|nalitied  to  protect  the  important  interests  of  this 


ACQUI8ITI0X    OF    OREGON  377 

powerful  company  and  to  control  its  wayward  servants  while  thus 
far  removed  from  the  reach  of  other  civil  authority.  Dr.  McLough- 
lin  is  ui)ward  of  six  feet  high  and  over  sixty  years  of  age.  In  per- 
son he  is  robust,  erect  and  a  little  inclined  to  corpulency,  one  of  the 
natural  results  of  contentment  and  repose.  The  clear  flush  of  rosy 
health  glows  u]K)n  his  cheeks,  his  eye  still  sparkles  with  youthful 
vivacity  while  he  is  in  conversation  with  you,  and  his  fine  head  of 
snow-white  hair  adds  not  a  little  to  the  impressiveness  of  his  ap- 
pearance. His  hospitality  is  unbounded,  and  I  will  sum  up  all  his 
qualities  by  saying  that  he  is  beloved  by  all  who  know  him." 

(Idem,  pp.  9G-7)  He  has  this  to  say  about  the  treatment  of  the 
emigration  by  Dr.  McLoughlin :  ^'Whatever  may  be  the  cause  of 
complaint  existing  against  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  their  treat- 
ment of  former  emigrants  from  the  United  States,  the  kindness  of 
Dr.  McLoughlin  to  this  emigration  has  been  very  great.  He  fur- 
nished them  with  goods  and  provisions  on  credit,  and  such  as  were 
sick  were  sent  to  the  hospital  free  of  expense,  where  they  had  the 
strict  and  careful  attendance  of  Dr.  Barclay,  a  skilful  physician 
and  an  excellent  and  humane  man.  The  Chief  Factor  likewise  lent 
the  emigrants  the  company's  boats  to  bring  down  such  of  the  fami- 
lies and  baggage  as  had  been  left  at  the  Cascades  by  the  advanced 
guard  of  the  expedition  which  had  preceded  me ;  and  he  also  fur- 
nished them  with  the  same  facilities  for  crossing  the  river  with 
their  cattle  at  Vancouver.  Had  it  not  been  for  the  kindness  of  this 
excellent  man  many  of  us  would  have  suffered  greatly,  and  I  have 
no  doubt  that  much  injustice  has  been  done  him  by  confounding 
his  personal  conduct  with  that  of  many  of  his  countrymen.  The 
policy  of  the  company  has,  it  is  true,  been  very  seriously  con- 
demned, as  will  be  seen  by  Mr.  Spaulding's  communication"  (This 
was  Capt.  T.  Spaulding  of  the  ship  Lausanne,  hereinafter  com- 
mented on  by  me. — W.  I.  M.)  "embraced  in  Mr.  Pendleton's  report, 
but  it  is  very  questionable  whether  Dr.  McLoughlin  is  justly  charge- 
able with  all  the  evils  that  have  arisen  out  of  it.  It  is  certainly 
true  that  he  has  been  in  some  measure  the  victim  of  misrepresenta- 
tion, for  I  know  of  my  own  knowledge  that  the  Indians  of  Southern 
Oregon  and  those  bordering  on  the  California  line,  instead  of  being 
inoffensive  and  well-disposed,  as  described  by  Mr.  Spaulding,  are 
on  the  contrary  hostile,  thievish  and  treacherous.  This  is  some- 
thing toward  a  general  refutation.  It  is  certain  that  the  doctor 
himself  has  uniformly  aided  settlers  by  supplying  them  with  farm- 
ing implements  and  with  seed  grain,  as  a  loan,  to  be  returned  out 
of  the  succeeding  crop.  He  has  even  gone  so  far  as  to  lend  them 
hogs,  to  be  returned  two  or  three  years  afterward  by  their  issue 
of  the  same  age;  to  furnish  oxen  to  break  their  ground  and  cows 


378  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

to  siipjily  milk  to  tlieir  families.  This  certainly  appears  to  me  to 
be  a  very  poor  way  to  retard  the  settlement  of  the  region  and  to 
disconrage  adventnrers  who  arrive  in  it. 

"A  great  deal  has  been  said  against  him  because  he  has  refused 
to  sell  the  cattle  belonging  to  the  company,  and  those  who  have 
made  these  complaints  have  certainly  reflected  very  little  upon  the 
subject  and  are  incapable  of  measuring  the  enlarged  scoi)e  of  the 
doctor's  policy.  The  supply  of  cattle  and  sheep  of  the  settlements 
was  very  limited,  and  the  great  object  has  been  to  increase  it.  This 
could  only  be  carried  out  by  secure  measures  for  their  protection; 
and  it  would  have  l)eon  absurd,  indeed,  while  the  authorities  of  the 
foi-t  woi-e  denying  themselves  the  luxury  of  beef  or  mutton  to  carry 
out  this  imi)ortant  object,  if  they  should  have  sold  cattle  to  those 
whose  cai>rice  might  destroy  them  at  pleasure.  Besides,  all  the 
cattle,  with  the  exception  of  a  very  few,  were  inferior  Spanish  ani- 
mals, and  it  was  a  matter  of  necessity  to  improve  the  stock  by 
crossing  them  with  those  of  the  English  breed.  The  same  case  ex- 
isted with  regard  to  the  sheep,  which  were  from  California,  but 
which,  by  rejjcated  crossings,  have  at  length  not  only  been  greatly 
increased,  but  have  been  improved  nearly  to  the  condition  of  full- 
bloods. 

"The  science  of  stock  raising  the  rough  mountain  men  who  were 
the  first  settlers  from  the  States  did  not  understand.  They  could 
only  understand  that  brutes  were  made  to  kill,  and  hence  the  dis- 
satisfaction and  consequent  complaint.  Having  improved  his  stock 
and  accomplished  a  proper  degree  of  increase,  the  doctor  was  ready 
enough  to  sell  on  reasonable  terms,  though,  to  say  the  truth,  he  did 
not  find  a  very  ready  market." 

{Idem,  p.  OS)  ''The  utmost  liberality  characterizes  all  the  deal- 
ings with  the  stranger  and  even  with  the  resident.  If  your  fortunes 
have  been  adverse,  and  you  are  not  able  to  pay  for  the  last  year's 
dealings,  you  are  required  to  give  your  note,  drawing  interest  at 
five  per  cent.  Instances  have  come  to  my  knowledge  since  my  ar- 
rival in  which  Dr  .McLoughlin  has  extended  the  credit  of  some 
of  his  customers  for  two  or  three  years  together.  He  has  supplied 
most  of  the  members  of  last  year's  emigration  with  such  articles  as 
they  needed,  taking  in  payment  only  the  pledge  of  their  honest  faces 
and  hard  hands," 

In  Niles'  Ilegister  for  November  2,  1844,  is  a  letter  from  Mr. 
P.urnett,  dated  Lincoln,  Oregon,  July  25,  1844,  in  which  is  the  fol- 
low iiig:  "I  was  six  weeks  at  Vancouver,  where  myself  and  family 
wore  most  hosfdtably  entertained  by  Dr.  McLoughlin  free  of  all 
charge.  He  has  been  a  great  friend  to  me  and  has  done  much  for 
the  emigration  generally." 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  379 

November  10,  1843,  Mr.  Burnett  addressed  a  letter  to  the  editor 
of  the  St.  Louis  Reporter,  from  which  paper  it  was  copied  into 
various  other  papers. 

In  it  he  wrote:  ''Provisions  are  abundant  here,  and  Dr.  Mc- 
Loughlin  (who  is  the  most  liberal  and  hospitable  man  in  the  world) 
furnishes  the  emigrants  with  wheat  to  be  paid  for  in  cash  or  in 
wheat  next  year.  At  the  Cascades  we  met  provisions  sent  us  by 
the  doctor,  and  all  purchased  who  applied,  even  without  money. 
Two  boats  have  been  sent  us  with  provisions,  and  the  doctor  has 
lent  two  boats  to  the  emigrants  free  of  charge.  We  find  him  doing 
everything  to  aid  the  emigrants." 

Capt.  T.  Spaulding  commanded  the  ship  Lausanne,  which  car- 
ried from  New  York  to  Vancouver  the  great  reinforcement  of  fifty- 
two  persons  to  the  Methodist  Mission,  leaving  New  York  October 
9,  1839,  and  arriving  at  Vancouver  June  1,  1810. 

Turning  to  Pendleton's  two  reports  hereinbefore  mentioned  (No. 
830,  2d  Sess.,  and  No.  31,  3d  Sess.,  27th  Cong.,  Reports  Coms.  H. 
of  R.),  we  find  (on  pp.  5()-61)  "extracts  from  the  journal  of  Capt. 
Spaulding  of  the  ship  Lausanne,  in  the  year  1811."  (Should  be 
1840.— W.  I.  M.) 

(P.  56)  "Dr.  McLoughlin,  chief  agent  for  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.,  has  charge  of  all  their  affairs  in  this  part  of  the  territory.  He 
is  a  gentleman  of  pleasing  address,  possessing  great  urbanity  of 
manners  and  unbounded  hospitality,  opening  his  house  to  all 
strangers  who  can  furnish  any  recommendations,  or  who  have  any 
claim,  as  men  of  character,  upon  his  hospitality;  even  the  trappers 
and  other  desperate  men  from  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  from  Cali- 
fornia are  not  turned  away,  but  are  provided  for  outside  the  fort. 
Indeed,  I  received  every  civility,  not  only  from  the  doctor,  but  all 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  servants,  especially  from  Mr,  Barrit  (Bir- 
nie?),  in  charge  of  Astoria,  or  Fort  George,  who  kindly  came  on 
board  at  Baker's  Bay  and  piloted  the  ship  to  the  fort  (fourteen 
miles),  and  sui)plied  all  my  large  company  with  every  refreshment 
the  place  afforded;  also  sent  on  board  the  best  Indian  pilot  on  the 
river;  but,  not  even  satisfied  with  this,  he  kindly  accompanied  me 
himself  to  Gray's  Bay,  the  most  difficult  part  of  the  river,  where  I 
found  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  ship  Columbia  waiting  a  wind  to 
pass  Tongue  Point  channel.  Capt.  Humphries  of  the  Columbia 
came  on  board  and  rendered  me  every  assistance  in  his  power  and 
sent  his  first  officer,  Mr.  Letty,  up  with  me  to  Pillar  Rock,  about 
fourteen  miles  from  Gray's  Bay.  The  next  morning,  after  getting 
under  way,  I  was  hailed  by  a  canoe,  which  I  found  had  been  dis- 
patched by  Mr.  McLoughlin,  who,  hearing  of  my  arrival,  imme- 
diately sent  on  board  the  best  pilot  at  the  fort  to  assist  me,  sending 


lifii)  ACQUISITIOX    OF    OREGON 

als(»  ;i  lar^e  Itih  of  liesh  butter  and  a  hag  ol"  fresh  bread.  This 
civility  and  attention  can  only  be  appreciated  when  I  state  that  I 
had  no  chart  of  the  i-iver  that  I  could  run  ten  miles  by  without  get- 
ting aground;  and  that,  out  of  the  conii)any"s  service,  there  is  no 
clinrt  of  the  river  of  any  value.  That  of  Mr.  Slacuni  is  very  good 
for  I  he  bar,  but  of  no  value  afterward.  Arrowsmith's  is  of  no  use 
whatever. 

"On  my  arrival  abreast  Fort  Vancouver,  about  0  o'clock  in  the 
evening,  I  found  the  doctor  on  the  bank  ready  to  receive  us.  He 
immediately  came  on  board  and  invited  all  the  ship's  company, 
fifty-four  in  number,  to  take  tea  with  him  at  the  fort;  I  with  four 
of  my  passengers  accepted  the  invitation.  The  next  day  all  the 
ship's  company  were  provided  with  comfortable  quarters  and  an 
abundant  table  at  the  fort;  and  this  hos])itality  was  continued  till 
thoy  were  all  sent  to  their  several  destinations.  One  of  the  ])ecu]iar 
traits  of  the  doctor's  character  is  that  he  never  tires  in  his  benevo- 
lent acts.  This  I  was  told  by  those  who  have  been  intimate  with 
him  for  years;  and,  so  far  as  my  experience  goes,  I  can  truly  con- 
firm all  that  was  told  me,  for  while  at  Vancouver  I  received  from 
him  every  civility,  and  his  kind  oflices  followed  me  all  the  way  down 
llic  river  and  even  out  over  the  bar." 

It  is  true  that  Capt.  Spaulding  on  pp.  58-9  criticises  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  for  intruding  on  American  territory  and  for  cruelty 
to  the  Indians,  but  concerning  these  criticisms  it  must  be  remarked : 

(1)  That  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  had  exactly  as  good  a  right 
there  as  any  American  had,  because  our  Government,  by  freely  exe- 
cuted treaties  made,  not  at  the  end  of  a  war,  but  in  time  of  pro- 
found ])eace,  had  consented  that  any  English  citizen  who  chose 
might  be  there;  and 

(2)  That  the  accusations  of  cruelty  to  Indians  must  have  been 
incorrect  gossip  which  he  heard,  being  directly  contrary  to  the  uni- 
form ])oli('y  of  that  company;  and 

(8)  That  while  what  I  have  quoted  from  him  is  his  report  of 
his  own  experiences  and  observations,  all  his  derogatory  criticisms 
are  of  matters  of  which  he  had  no  chance  for  personal  observation 
and  are  mere  hearsay,  and  from  abundant  contemporaneous  sources 
there  is  indisputable  evidence  that  these  derogatory  statements 
based  on  hearsay  are  incorrect. 

In  1834  Hall  J.  Kelley,  a  P>oston  school  teacher,  who  had  been 
urging  the  settlement  of  Oregon  by  lectures,  newspaper  articles  and 
])am])hlets  ever  since  1817,  and  Avho  had  journeyed  to  Oregon  via 
Mexico  and  ralifornia,  led  a  small  ])arty  ''of  about  a  dozen"  from 
Calirornia  to  Oregon,  arriving  in  the  Willamette  Valley  the  last 
of  October,  1834.    It  seems  impossible  to  determine  the  exact  num- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  381 

ber  in  Kelley's  party,  he  himself  giving-  it  variously  in  different 
places  and  some  other  authorities  giving  it  nine  and  some  fifteen. 
Lee  and  Frost  say  "about  a  dozen,"  Though  Kelley  himself  was  a 
thoroughly  honorable  man,  a  few  disreputable  individuals  who  had 
loose  ideas  as  to  the  titles  to  horses  had  attached  themselves  to  the 
party,  and  in  the  northern  settlements  of  California  these  men  had 
stolen  some  horses  and  taken  them  along  to  Oregon,  and  so  upon 
the  whole  party  rested  the  disgrace  of  the  charge  (which  Governor 
Figueroa  of  California  sent  by  sea  to  McLoughlin)  that  Kelley's 
party  were  horse  thieves — a  crime  which  in  the  pioneer  days  of  all 
the  Far  West  has  meant  a  worse  otfense  than  murder.  Under  this 
dreadful  stigma  the  party  remained  till  Ewing  Young,  the  leading 
spirit  in  the  party  (but  not  of  the  dishonest  faction  of  it)  secured 
from  Governor  Figueroa  the  next  year  a  statement  that  he  was  in- 
nocent, after  which  he  and  McLoughlin  were  good  friends. 

Kelley  was  sadly  broken  in  health  when  he  reached  Oregon,  and 
though  undoubtedly  honest,  on  account  of  Governor  Figueroa's 
warning  against  him  McLoughlin  did  not  welcome  him  nor  his  party 
as  he  had  done  other  parties  of  Americans,  but  he  (McLoughlin) 
says  that  when  Kelley  arrived  at  Fort  Vancouver  he  was  "very  ill, 
and  out  of  humanity  I  placed  him  in  a  house,  put  a  man  to  nurse 
him,  the  surgeon  of  the  establishment  attended  on  him,  and  had  his 
victuals  sent  him  every  meal  until  he  left  in  1835,  when  I  gave  him 
a  passage  to  Oahu.  On  his  return  to  the  States  he  published  a  nar- 
rative of  his  voyage  in  which,  instead  of  being  grateful  for  the 
kindness  shown  him,  he  abused  me  and  falsely  stated  I  had  been 
so  alarmed  with  the  dread  that  he  would  destroy  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  trade  that  I  kept  a  constant  watch  over  him." 

Kelley  himself  in  his  "Narrative"  (p.  59)  says:  "When  about 
to  leave  Oregon  the  Chief  Factor  of  the  company  presented  me  with 
a  draft  of  seven  pounds  sterling,  payable  at  the  Sandwich  Islands. 
A'  part,  however,  was  paid  at  Vancouver  in  articles  of  comfort. 
This  was  kind,  and  I  felt  grateful  for  it."  (Cf,  on  Kelley  (a)  H. 
H,  Bancroft's  "History  of  the  North  West  Coast,"  Vol,  II,,  pp.  548- 
54;  (b)  "A  History  of  the  Settlement  of  Oregon  and  the  Interior 
■of  I^pper  California  and  of  Persecutions  and  Afflictions  of  Forty 
Years'  Continuance  Endured  by  the  Author,  Hall  J.  Kelley,  A.  M.," 
Springfield,  Mass.,  18(;8,  and  for  Ewing  Young,  Transactions  Ore- 
gon Pioneer  Assn.,  1880,  pp.  56-8). 

Kelley's  book  (as  its  title  page  plainly  indicates)  gives  abundant 
evidence  that  his  mind  was  very  much  disordered  when  it  was  writ- 
ten. Of  the  great  value  of  his  services  to  Oregon  there  can  be  no 
doubt.  As  early  as  1817  he  began  an  agitation  for  the  colonization 
of  Oregon  and  was  the  first  to  assert  in  his  numerous  lectures  and 


382  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

]);iiiii)lik'ts  and  newspaper  articles  the  feasibility  of  au  overland 
migration.  As  oarl.v  as  1829  he  procured  the  incorporation  by  the 
Massachusetts  Lej-islature  of  "The  American  Society  for  encourag- 
ing; the  settlement  of  the  Oregon  Territory,"  and  in  IS'M)  published 
a  "Cieographical  Memoir  of  Oregon,"  accompanied  by  a  map,  and 
in  1831  a  "(leneral  Circular"  for  those  intending  to  migrate  to  Ore- 
gon, in  which  he  printed  the  Rocky  Mountain  Fur  Co.'s  account  of 
the  first  wagons  to  the  Kocky  ^fountains  in  1830  and  their  declara- 
tion that  they  could  easily  have  gone  over  the  mountains  through 
the  Southern  Pass,  and  Pilcher's  declaration  in  the  same  Sen.  Ex. 
Doc.  30,  21st  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  that  "wagons  and  carriages  may  cross 
them  in  a  state  of  nature  without  difficulty  and  with  little  delay  in 
the  day's  journey," 

In  1832  he  i»ublished  in  Zioa's  Ecnihl,  in  Boston,  several  articles 
calling  for  missionaries  to  accompany  his  migration  to  Oregon. 
Wyeth's  first  party  resulted  from  Kelley's  publications. 

Tlis  ])ersonal  reception  and  treatment,  and  that  of  his  party  by 
the  Hudson's  Hay  Co.,  were  certainly  quite  as  kind  as  could  have 
been  expected  with  the  charge  of  being  horse  thieves  hanging  over 
the  whole  party. 

Ewing  Young  died  in  February,  1811,  and  left  nothing  in  writ- 
ing concerning  his  reception  in  Oregon  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co., 
and  the  only  trustworthy  account  is  that  of  his  intimate  friend,  Mr. 
Courteney  M.  Walker  (Transactions  Oregon  Pioneer  Assn.,  1880,  pp. 
50-8 ). 

As  Mr.  Walker  was  the  manager  of  Wyeth's  fur  trading  and 
salmon  fishing  post  at  Wappatoo  Island,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Wil- 
lamette, he  certainly  was  not  likely  to  be  prejudiced  in  favor  of  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  He  says  that  by  the  spring  of  1836,  after  Gov- 
ernor Figueroa  had  withdrawn  his  charges  as  far  as  Ewing  Young 
was  concerned.  Young,  being  very  active  and  desirous  of  accumu- 
lating })r()pcrty,  began  to  erect  a  distillery,  and  continues:  ''By  this 
time  a  thorough  reconciliation  had  taken  place  between  Y^oung  and 
Dr.  McLoughlin  and  the  latter  told  Mr.  Young  that  if  he  ]>ersisted 
in  his  distillery  it  would  prove  a  ruin  to  the  farming  settlement, 
and  assured  him  that  if  he  wished  to  enter  into  any  kind  of  enter- 
]>rise  that  would  be  useful  and  beneficial  to  the  young  settlement 
that  he  would  advance  any  required  aid.  T^pon  this  appeal  and 
otfer  he  abandoned  the  distillery  and  then  was  planning  for  a  saw 
and  grist  mill. 

''About  this  time  (winter  of  1830-37)  Lieut.  Slocum  (Slacum) 
arrived,  calling  at  Vancouver,  where  he  made  his  quarters.  Tn  a 
few  days  he  called  upon  Young  and,  everything  being  explained  sat- 
isfactorily. Young  and  Slocum  ])ut  in  motion  the  introduction  of 


ACQUISITION   OF    OREGON  383 

Spanish  cattle  into  Oregon  and  within  a  few  days  a  company  was 
formed,  Slocum  supplying  the  money  and  giving  a  free  passage  to 
the  persons  engaged  in  his  chartered  brig  to  California.  In  this 
company  Young  acted  as  the  purchasing  agent  and  manager." 

As  Dr.  McLoughlin  furnished  one-half  of  the  money  for  this 
company,  the  fact  that  Young  was  made  "purchasing  agent"  shows 
how  complete  was  the  reconciliation  between  him  and  McLoughlin. 

Except  the  journal  of  Rev.  E.  E.  Parrish,  hereinbefore  noted 
(Cf.  p.  371  ante),  and  which  says  nothing  of  their  treatment  by  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  officers,  I  have  found  no  contemporaneous  ac- 
count of  the  1844  migration,  which  started  after  Congress  (at  the 
first  session  of  the  2Sth  Congress)  had  indulged  in  a  great  amount 
of  very  bellicose  discussion  on  Oregon — the  Democratic  leaders 
clamoring  for  "all  of  Oregon"  (i.  e.,  to  54  deg.  40  min.)  as  a  prepara- 
tion for  the  ''fifty-four  forty  or  fight"  campaign  of  the  summer  and 
autumn  of  1844,  and  denouncing  the  great  Whig  leader,  Henry 
Clay,  as  a  "traitor"  for  proposing  in  1826  as  our  "ultimatum"  the 
identical  line  of  49  deg.  which  that  staunch  Democrat,  President 
James  Monroe,  had  proposed  in  1818  and  1823,  and  which  that 
equally  staunch  Democrat,  Polk,  in  1846,  accepted  despite  the  ''fifty- 
four  forty  or  fight"  campaign  on  which  he  was  elected. 

Two  of  the  prominent  members  of  this  1844  migration  were  Hon. 
John  Minto,  who  was  President  of  the  Oregon  Pioneer  Association 
in  1877,  and  Joseph  ^Yatt,  a  prominent  Oregonian  for  many  years. 
In  "Transactions  Oregon  Pioneer  Association"  for  1876,  pp.  35  to 
50,  is  the  "Occasional  Address"  for  that  year,  by  Mr.  Minto,  and 
on  pp.  36-7  it  reads  as  follows: 

"This  difference  between  the  two  classes  of  colonists  is  shown 
in  the  different  circumstances  and  the  results  of  the  attempt  of  each 
to  colonize  on  Puget  Sound.  Under  the  guidance  and  fostering  care 
of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  the  hardy  Scotch  and  Canadians  failed. 
As  they  were  slowly  abandoning  the  enterprise,  a  few  citizens  of 
the  United  States,  against  the  almost  hostile  opposition  of  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.,  against  the  earnest  advice  and  with  the  express  state- 
ment of  Dr.  McLoughlin,  the  Chief  Factor,  that  they  (the  company 
he  represented)  could  give  them  no  aid,  not  even  employment,  went 
there  and  maintained  themselves,  and  in  a  few  years  were  holding 
public  meetings  and  passing  resolutions  calling  on  their  Govern- 
ment to  remove  the  (to  them)  foreign  elements  out  of  their  way.  I 
may  here  remark  that  it  is  one  of  the  notable  features  of  the  immi- 
gration of  1844  that  it  furnished  the  nucleus  of  this  successful  set- 
tlement on  Puget  Sound." 

On  pp.  47-8,  as  follows :  "The  families  and  wagons  were  brought 
down  the  Columbia  bv  boats  loaned  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  by 


384  ACQUIS  J  TIOX    OF    OREGON 

tlu'ii-  ilicii  ('liit'l'  l-\icIor,  In-,  -lohii  McLoiiuliliii.  Daniel  ('hn-k,  S. 
i;.  «"io(U('ir  ami  iiiyseir  had  lelt  our  trains  at  Fort  Howard  and 
made  our  w a.v  down  (he  valley  of  the  Cohinibia,  and  while  working 
for  a  little  means  to  return  with  applied  to  Dr.  McLoughlin  for  the 
use  of  a  hatteau  of  the  Hudson's  May  Co.'s  with  which  to  {^o  up 
and  assist  our  friends  down  the  river.  This  we  received  from  the 
good  man.  lie  also  caused  our  orders  we  had  on  the  company  for 
the  little  supplies  our  earnings  in  the  settlement  would  c<mimand 
to  be  respected,  more  for  the  sake  of  the  object  of  our  enterprise 
than  from  any  obligation  to  fill  them.  Indeed,  he  set  aside  their 
lules  of  trade  to  do  so,  and  I  noticed  a  difference  between  his  man- 
ner and  that  of  Mr.  James  Douglas  in  their  intercourse  with  us. 
Mr.  Douglas  was  an  urbane,  civil  and  gentlemanly  man  in  his  deal- 
ings with  us;  but,  honest  to  himself  and  his  sovereign,  he  could  not 
disguise  his  chagrin  at  each  addition  to  the  number  of  American 
settlers,  and  if  ever  man,  by  loyalty  to  his  sovereign's  interests, 
earned  honors,  James  Douglas  deserved  his  knighthood,  lint  John 
McLoughlin  'held  the  patent  for  his  honors  innnediately  from  Al- 
mighty God.'  He  filled  our  orders,  wished  us  success  in  our  en- 
terjn'ise  and  said  of  his  own  volition  that  a  messenger  would  leave 
that  evening  with  the  last  dispatches  to  a  vessel  about  to  sail  out 
of  the  Columbia  Kiver,  which  afforded  us,  if  we  would  like  to  take 
it,  an  opportunity  to  write  to  our  friends  in  the  east  we  might  not 
get  again  for  six  months.  We  thanked  him,  but  said  we  could  not, 
for  we  had  no  writing  material  with  us.  He  immediately  ordered 
us  fniiiislied  with  everything  necessary." 

In  the  "Transactions  of  Oregon  Pioneer  Assn.  for  1880,"  pp.  24- 
27.  Josejih  Watt  ])ublishes  "Recollections  of  Dr.  John  McLoughlin,'^ 
fioiii  which  the  following  are  extracts: 

•On  the  i:{th  of  November,  1844,  a  company  of  immigrants 
landed  at  Fort  Vancouver,  brought  there  on  a  batteau  commanded 
by  Joseph  Hess,  an  immigrant  of  '43.  The  boat  belonged  to  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  Mr.  Hess  was  intrusted  with  the  boat  for  the 
jiui-pose  of  bringing  immigrants  down  the  river.  We  had  eaten  the 
last  of  our  provisions  at  our  last  cam])  and  were  told  by  Hess  that 
we  ronld  get  jdenty  at  the  fort,  with  or  without  money;  that  the 
old  doctor  never  turned  peojjle  away  hungry.  This  made  us  feel 
quite  comfortable,  for  there  was  not  a  dollar  among  us.  As  near 
as  I  can  i-emenibcr  the  comjiany  consisted  of  sixteen  men,  five  women 
and  four  cliildrcn.  As  soon  as  we  landed  at  the  fort  the  men  all 
started  to  find  Dr.  McLoughlin,  the  women  and  children  walking 
al)out  tlie  shore  for  exercise.  We  soon  found  the  doctor  in  a  small 
room  he  called  his  office.  He  was  a  tall,  broad-shouldered,  ])ortly 
and  digniliccl  old  gentleman;  his  hair  loiiir  and  white  as  snow;  face 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  385 

cleanly  shaven,  rnddy  and  full,  and  of  a  rather  nervous  tempera- 
ment. He  met  us  pleasantly,  made  us  welcome,  inquired  as  to  our 
journey  down  the  river,  and  particularly  of  those  we  left  behind. 
We  were  the  first  to  arrive,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  packers. 
He  inquired  who  commanded  the  boat  and  how  much  we  had  to 
pay.  He  told  us  that  he  had  furnished  the  boats  free  of  charge  to 
certain  parties  to  bring  immigrants  down  the  river,  limiting  their 
charges  to  keep  them  from  taking  advantage  of  necessity.  He  spoke 
of  our  being  so  late,  and  feared  there  would  be  considerable  suffer- 
ing before  they  could  all  be  taken  down  the  river,  but  would  do  all 
in  his  power  until  they  reached  their  destination. 

"We  then  made  known  to  him  our  wants.  We  were  all  out  of 
provisions.  There  was  a  small  table  in  one  corner  of  the  room,  at 
which  he  took  a  seat  and  directed  us  to  stand  in  a  line  (there  being 
so  many  of  us  the  line  reached  nearly  around  the  room),  and  then 
told  us  the  year  before  and  in  previous  years  he  had  furnished  the 
people  with  all  the  provisions  and  clothing  they  wanted,  but  lately 
had  established  a  trading  house  at  Oregon  City,  where  we  could  get 
supplies;  but  for  immediate  necessity  he  would  supply  provisions 
at  the  fort.  Several  of  our  party  broke  in,  saying,  'Doctor,  I  have 
no  money  to  pay  you,  and  I  don't  know  when  or  how  I  can  pay 
you.' 

"  'Tut,  Tut !  never  mind  that ;  you  cannot  suffer,'  said  the  doc- 
tor. He  then  commenced  at  the  head  man,  saying:  'Your  name,  if 
you  please;  how  many  in  the  family  and  what  do  you  desire?'  Upon 
receiving  an  answer  the  doctor  wrote  an  order,  directing  him  where 
to  go  to  have  it  filled,  then  called  up  the  next  man,  and  so  on  until 
we  were  all  supplied.  He  told  us  the  account  of  each  man  would 
be  sent  to  Oregon  City,  and  when  we  took  a  claim  and  raised  wheat 
we  could  settle  the  account  by  delivering  wheat  at  that  place.  Some 
few  who  came  after  us  got  clothing.  Such  was  the  case  with  every 
boat  load  and  all  those  who  came  by  land  down  the  trail.  If  he 
had  said,  'We  have  these  supplies  to  sell  for  cash  down,'  I  think 
we  would  have  suffered.  After  we  had  our  orders  filled  we  went  on 
board  the  boat  which  was  to  take  us  to  Linnton  (a  place  Governor 
McCarver  started,  expecting  to  build  up  a  large  city  in  the  near 
future). 

"We  found  the  doctor  in  a  towering  rage;  he  was  giving  it  to 
Hess  right  and  left.  It  appeared  that  the  doctor  had  come  to  the 
river  to  see  the  boat.  He  found  it,  as  he  supposed,  full  of  wagons, 
and  as  he  had  given  strict  orders  that  only  bedding,  clothing,  camp 
equipment,  etc.,  should  be  brought  with  the  immigrants,  and  that 
none  should  be  left,  he  believed  that  Hess  was  making  an  extra  price 
by  bringing  wagons.     We  commenced  getting  into  the  boat  and 


386  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

cliinbinf;  on  top  of  the  wagons.  When  all  were  in  there  was  not 
an  inch  of  spare  room  left.  The  doctor  stook  looking  on  until  we 
were  ont  on  the  river;  he  evidently  expected  to  see  the  boat  sink. 
Soon  we  heai-d  hiiu  call  out:     *Mr.  Hess!   All  right,  sir.' 

•W  lien  we  started  for  Oregon  we  were  prejudiced  against  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  and  Dr.  McLoughlin,  being  Chief  Factor  of  the 
company,  came  in  for  a  double  share  of  that  feeling.  I  think  a 
great  deal  of  this  was  caused  by  reports  of  missionaries  and  ad- 
verso  ti-aders,  imbuing  us  with  a  feeling  that  it  was  our  mission  to 
bring  this  country  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  stars  and  stripes. 
Hut  when  we  found  him  anxious  to  assist  us,  nervous  at  our  situa- 
tion in  being  so  late,  and  doing  so  much  without  charge,  letting  us 
have  of  his  store  and  waiting  without  interest  until  we  could  make 
a  farm  and  i)ay  him  from  the  surplus  products  of  such  farm,  the 
prejudice  heretofore  existing  began  to  be  rapidly  allayed.  We  did 
not  know  that  every  dollar's  worth  of  provisions,  etc.,  he  gave  us, 
all  advice  and  assistance  in  every  shape,  were  against  the  positive 
oi-ders  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  and  in  the  end  he  had  to  pay  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  every  dollar  that  he  had  trusted  to  the  settlers 
of  this  country.  In  this  connection  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  thou- 
sands of  dollars  virtually  loaned  by  him  to  settlers  at  different 
times  in&these  early  days  was  never  paid,  as  an  examination  of  his 
books  and  papers  will  amply  testify."  .  .  .  ''In  the  first  few 
years  after  the  permanent  settlement  commenced  all  classes  asked 
the  advice  of  the  doctor  as  to  the  best  course  to  pursue  with  refer- 
ence to  the  many  constantly  arising  questions.  It  appeared  by  com- 
mon consent  that  he  was  practically  the  first  Governor  of  the  great 
North  l\ncific  Coast.  No  man  ever  fulfilled  that  trust  better  than 
])r.  John  McLoughlin.  He  was  always  anxious  over  the  Indian 
problem.  No  one  understood  the  Indian  character  better  than  he 
did.  All  the  Indians  knew  him  as  the  great  'White  Chief,'  and  be- 
lieved whatever  he  said  could  be  depended  on ;  that  he  was  not  their 
enemy,  but  was  strictly  just  with  them  in  everything;  could  punish 
or  reward,  as  he  thought  best,  and  no  trouble  grew  out  of  it.  But 
with  the  settlers  the  case  was  different.  Their  intercourse  with  the 
Indians  led  to  more  or  less  complications.  I^nprincipled  whites 
would  take  advantage;  they  made  and  sold  them  a  vile  compound 
called  'Tilue  Kuin,'  the  use  of  which  not  only  led  to  intoxication, 
but  seemed  to  arouse  all  that  was  bad  in  both  white  and  red  man. 
1)1-.  McLoughlin  frequently  had  to  use  all  his  power  to  keep  peace 
and  hai-mony  between  the  two  races.  Many  believed  if  the  doctor's 
Mariiings  and  advice  had  been  followed  much  of  our  trouble  with 
the  Indians  would  not  have  occurred.  His  advice  to  Dr.  Whitman, 
when  he  understood  how  the  Indians  were  acting,  was  to  'leave  the 


ACQUISITION   OF    OREGON  387 

place  immediately;  not  to  trust  them,  delay  was  dangerous;  leave, 
and  don't  go  back  until  the  Indians  feel  better  toward  you.'  If  this 
advice  had  been  acted  upon  that  terrible  massacre  would  not  have 
taken  place  and  there  would  have  been  no  Cayuse  war.  Yet  after 
these  events  occurred  no  man  did  more  to  bring  the  Indians  to  jus- 
tice and  avenge  the  murder  of  Dr.  Whitman  and  others  than  Dr. 
McLoughlin." 

Concerning  what  Minto  says  of  the  settlement  of  the  Puget 
Sound  region  (which  was  begun  by  this  1844  migration  in  1845), 
it  is  to  be  observed  that  it  was  fully  expected  by  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  and  by  Englishmen  generally  that  the  Columbia  River  would 
be  the  boundary,  and  nothing  was  more  natural  and  proper,  there- 
fore, than  that  this  English  corporation  should  seek  to  dissuade 
Americans  from  settling  north  of  the  Columbia ;  and  that  there  was 
no  improper  action  in  this  regard  is  shown  by  Minto's  statement 
that  it  was  ''against  the  almost  hostile  opposition  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.,  against  the  earnest  advice  and  with  the  express  statement 
of  Dr.  McLoughlin,  the  Chief  Factor,  that  they  (the  company  he 
represented)  could  give  them  no  aid,  not  even  employment." 

Now,  as  McLoughlin  was  then  and  had  been  for  twenty  years 
the  only  representative  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  residing  in  the 
Oregon  Territory,  "whose  word  was  the  end  of  the  law"  as  to  the 
policy  and  aims  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  it  is  plain  that  there  was 
nothing  more  of  this  "almost  hostile  opposition  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co."  to  these  American  settlers  in  what  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  regarded  as  certain  to  soon  become  English  territory  than  is 
contained  in  the  declaration  that  "McLoughlin  earnestly  advised 
them  against  making  the  settlement,  and  declared  that  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  could  give  them  no  aid,  not  even  employment." 

As  to  the  actual  experience  of  this  first  American  colony  in  the 
Puget's  Sound  region  (of  which  Joseph  Watt  was  not  a  member), 
while  I  find  no  contemporaneous  evidence,  we  have  the  sworn  testi- 
mony of  Michael  T.  Simmons,  who  was  the  leader  of  the  first  com- 
pany of  American  settlers  there,  given  September  1,  1865,  in  the 
"Case  of  the  Puget's  Sound  Agricultural  Co.  vs.  the  United  States," 
Vol.  II.,  p.  40,  as  follows: 

"Int.  3.  'What  do  you  know  of  assistance  rendered  to  the  early 
settlers  in  the  country;  if  so,  to  what  extent  was  it  rendered?' 

"Ans.  'I  know  that  they  were  very  kind  to  all  the  settlers; 
every  assistance  that  we  asked  for  we  got.  I  was  sent  by  my  party 
to  ask  for  things,  and  what  we  asked  for  we  generally  got.  We  got 
seed  wheat,  peas,  oats,  potatoes,  pigs  and  chickens,  and  in  some  in- 
stances cows  were  loaned,  which  were  afterward  purchased  by  the 


388  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

settlers;  without  the  assistance  of  the  company  I  hardly  know  what 
we  who  came  north  of  the  Columbia  would  have  done,' " 

Mr.  Simmons  also  testified  in  the  ''Case  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
r.v.  the  United  States"  (Vol.  I.,  pp.  129-139),  as  follows: 

"Int.  17.  'State  in  what  manner  the  Indians  from  Fort  Hall  to 
tlie  end  of  your  journey  treated  you,  and  to  what  inliuence  you 
ascribe  that  treatment?'  (This  relates  to  his  experience  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  overland  migration  of  1844. — W.  I.  M.) 

"Ans.  'The  Indians  were  very  friendly  and  treated  us  very  well 
all  the  way  from  Fort  Hall  to  Vancouver,  and  I  attribute  that  treat- 
ment to  the  influence  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.' 

"Int.  14.  'What,  if  any,  assistance  was  afforded  to  you  person- 
ally, and  to  other  emigrants  in  the  w^ay  of  boats,  to  come  down  the 
Columbia  River  with  goods,  provisions,  grain  for  sowing,  employ- 
ment, etc.,  in  1844?' 

"Ans.  'I  was  loaned  a  batteau  to  bring  my  family  down  the 
river  free  of  charge,  and  the  company  treated  other  emigrants  in 
the  same  manner ;  they  let  us  have  provisions,  seed  grain  and  breed- 
ing pigs;  they  also  gave  us  employment  getting  saw  logs,  making 
shingles  and  staves  to  pay  for  what  we  got.' " 

This,  please  bear  in  mind,  was  in  1844,  in  all  the  fury  of  the 
"54  deg.  40  min.  or  fight"  canvass  for  the  Presidency  which  resulted 
in  the  election  of  James  K.  Polk  to  the  Presidency,  and  Simmons, 
who  was  a  native  of  Kentucky  and  a  prominent  citizen  of  Wash- 
ington Territory,  farmer,  merchant,  ship  owner,  owner  of  a  grist 
and  saw  mill,  seven  years  United  States  Indian  Agent  and  member 
of  the  Oregon  Legislature  in  1849,  gives  this  testimony  when  twenty 
years'  time  certainly  had  given  him  ample  opportunity  for  reflec- 
tion, and  at  a  time,  just  at  the  close  of  the  civil  war,  when  the  preju- 
dice against  the  Hudson's  Bay  and  Puget  Sound  Agricultural  Com- 
panies, as  against  everything  British,  was  at  its  highest  all  over 
the  counti'y,  and  especially  in  the  Old  Oregon  Territory.  Of  Sim- 
mons' personal  character  Hon.  Elwood  Evans,  the  historian  of  Ore- 
gon and  Washington,  says  in  a  sketch  of  his  career:  "To  no  fellow- 
being  (lid  he  ever  intentionally  commit  a  wrong.  All  the  early 
comers  to  Puget  Sound  will  ever  treasure  the  remembrance  of  his 
unstinted  hospitality  and  his  ever-ready  and  active  zeal  in  contrib- 
uting to  the  comfort  of  every  settler.  To  the  extent  of  his  means 
none  moi-e  than  he  contributed  to  the  establishment  of  schools, 
churches  and  roads  and  other  public  benefits"  (Transactions  Ore- 
gon Pioneer  Assn.,  1886,  pp.  87-98). 

As  to  Watt's  statement  that  "we  did  not  know  that  every  dol- 
lar's worth  of  provisions,  etc.,  he  gave  us,  all  advice  and  assistance 
in  every  shape,  was  against  the  positive  orders  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 


ACQUISITION   OF   OREGON  380 

Co.,  and  in  the  end  he  had  to  pay  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  every  dollar 
that  he  had  trusted  to  the  settlers  of  the  country,"  it  is  only  neces- 
sary to  say,  as  in  the  case  of  the  criticism  which  Capt.  Spaulding 
of  the  ship  Lausanne  made  of  the  policy  of  the  company,  as  here- 
inbefore quoted  and  commented  upon  by  me  (see  pp.  379-380  ante) 
that  in  what  he  testified  of  the  kindness  of  Dr.  McLoughlin  to  the 
emigrants  and  the  assistance  which  he  rendered  them,  not  out  of 
his  private  means,  but  out  of  the  stores  under  his  control  as  the 
superintendent  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  whole  business  in  the  Ore- 
gon Territory,  Mr.  Watt  speaks  of  what  he  knew  from  his  own  per- 
sonal experience  and  observation,  while  as  to  the  question  of  what 
the  positive  orders  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  were,  and  whether  or 
not  Dr.  McLoughlin  acted  contrary  to  them  and  was  made  to  pay 
the  company  every  dollar  that  he  had  trusted  to  the  settlers  of  this 
country,  Mr.  Watt,  never  having  been  in  the  position  of  a  director 
or  other  official  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  and  not  pretending  to 
have  any  information  from  any  inspection  of  their  official  records, 
is  merely  repeating  hearsay  on  this  matter,  and  that  as  Dr.  Mc- 
Loughlin visited  England  in  1838,  six  years  after  Wyeth's  first 
party  reached  Oregon  and  four  years  after  his  second  party,  with 
the  Methodist  missionaries  and  Townsend  and  Nuttall,  the  natural- 
ists, reached  Oregon,  and  also  Hall  J.  Kelley's  party  of  American 
settlers  reached  Oregon,  and  three  years  after  Eev.  Samuel  Parker 
reached  Oregon  and  was  so  hospitably  entertained  by  Dr.  IMcLough- 
lin  and  all  the  other  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  officials,  and  two  years 
after  Whitman,  Spalding  and  Gray  reached  Oregon,  and  as  Dr.  Mc- 
Loughlin returned  in  1839  with  his  powers  undiminished,  and  as  in 
1841  Sir  George  Simpson,  the  absolute  Governor  of  all  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.'s  affairs  in  America  from  1822  to  1857  (Cf.  his  testimony 
before  select  committee  of  Parliament  in  1857,  quoted  by  Gushing  in 
his  argument  in  Vol.  IX.,  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  Puget's  Sound 
Agricultural  Co.  vs.  United  States,  supplement,  p.  9),  reached  Ore- 
gon on  a  tour  of  inspection  of  all  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  posts  and 
officers  there  and  returned  to  London  in  the  autumn  of  1842,  and 
left  McLoughlin's  powers  undiminished,  and  as  those  powers  re- 
mained undisturbed  till  he  resigned  in  the  autumn  of  1845,  it  is 
simply  incredible,  with  the  rigid  discipline  always  maintained  by 
that  company  over  all  its  agents  and  employes,  that  this  hearsay 
part  of  Mr.  Watt's  statement  can  be  correct,  the  more  especially  as 
the  sworn  testimony  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  officers  in  Oregon, 
Messrs.  James  Douglas  and  Archibald  McKinlay,  men  of  the  high- 
est character  and  men  who  were  in  position  to  know  the  exact  truth 
about  the  matter,  squarely  contradicts  this  hearsay  statement  of 
Watt.     (Cf.  "The  Case  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  Puget's  Sound 


390  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

Agricultiiial  Co.  cs.  the  Tnited  States,"  Vol.  I.,  pp.  GO-61,  for  Doug- 
las, aud  1U;M04  for  McKinlay's  testimony,  quoted  on  p.  397  infra.) 
The  migration  of  1845  consisted  of  about  2,500  souls,  with  be- 
tween 500  and  000  wagons,  and  among  them  was  Joel  Palmer,  cap- 
tain of  a  company  that  started  from  Independence,  Mo.,  and  had 
about  forty  wagons  (see  'Transactions  Oregon  Pioneer  Assn.,  1877, 
pp.  54  and  55).  Palmer  returned  to  the  States  in  184G  with  five 
companions,  and  in  1847  returned  to  Oregon  with  his  family  and 
roinained  there  the  rest  of  his  long  and  honored  life.  His  "Journal 
of  Travels  Over  the  Kocky  Mountains  to  I  he  Mouth  of  the  Columbia 
Kiver,  made  during  the  years  1845  and  1846,  by  Joel  Palmer,  also 
a  letter  from  the  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding,  Cincinnati,  J.  A.  and  TT.  P, 
James,  1847,"  is  the  only  contemporaneous  account  of  that  journey 
so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  ascertain.  On  p.  42,  under  date  of 
August  8,  1845,  he  says :  "We  traveled  but  five  miles,  which  brought 
us  to  Fort  Hall.  .  .  .  Capt.  Grant  is  now  the  ofiScer  in  com- 
mand ;  he  has  the  bearing  of  a  gentleman." 

(P.  112)  Palmer  says:  "After  breakfast  we  visited  the  fort" 
(/.  e.,  Vancouver),  where  we  had  an  introduction  to  Dr.  McLough- 
lin,  the  Governor  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  He  appears  to  be  much 
of  a  gentleman  and  invited  us  to  remain  during  the  day,  but  as  we 
were  upon  an  excursion  down  the  river  we  only  remained  to  make 
a  few  purchases." 

(Idem,,  p[).  G2-()4)  Palmer  gives  an  account  of  the  unfortunate 
outcome  and  hard  experiences  of  an  expedition  led  by  one  S.  L. 
Meek,  who  induced  about  200  families  to  turn  off  from  the  regular 
route  at  Malheur  River,  about  half-way  from  Fort  Hall  to  Fort 
Walla  Walla,  and  try  a  new  route  to  The  Dalles.  After  telling  how 
they  narrowly  escaped  death  from  starvation  and  that  about  twenty 
of  them  died  from  disease  previous  to  their  arrival  at  The  Dalles, 
and  as  many  more  after  their  arrival  there.  Palmer  goes  on  as  fol- 
lows : 

"Tt  has  been  stated  that  some  members  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
were  instrumental  in  this  expedition,  but  such  is  not  the  fact. 
Whilst  I  was  at  Fort  Hall  I  conversed  with  Captain  Grant  respect- 
ing the  practicability  of  this  same  route,  and  was  advised  of  the 
fact  that  the  teams  would  be  unable  to  get  through.  The  individual 
in  charge  at  Fort  lioise  also  advised  me  to  the  same  purport.  The 
censure  rests,  in  the  origin  of  this  expedition,  upon  (S.  L.)  Meek" 
(who  was  a  thoroughly  patriotic  American,  like  his  brother,  the 
noted  Col.  Jos.  L.  Meek. — W.  I.  M.),  "but  I  have  not  the  least  doubt 
but  he  sn])posed  they  could  get  through  in  safety.  I  have  under- 
stood that  a  few  of  the  members  controlled  Meek,  and  caused  him 
to  depart  from  his  original  plan." 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  391 

(Idem,  pp.  116-118)  Palmer  describes  the  Oregon  Territory, 
and  stating  the  population  he  goes  on :  "The  settlers  are  laboring 
under  great  disadvantages  on  account  of  not  being  able  to  obtain 
a  sufficient  amount  of  farming  implements.  The  early  settlers  were 
supplied  at  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  stores,  and  at  prices  much  less 
than  these  now  charged  for  the  same  articles.  At  that  time  the 
supply  was  equal  to  the  demand;  but  since  the  tide  of  emigration 
has  turned  so  strongly  to  this  region  the  demand  is  much  greater 
than  the  supply.  This  may  be  said  of  almost  every  kind  of  goods 
or  merchandise.  The  supply  of  goods  in  the  hands  of  the  American 
merchants  has  been  very  limited,  being  the  remnant  of  cargoes 
shipped  round  upon  that  coast  more  for  the  purpose  of  trading  with 
the  Indians  than  viith  the  cultivators  of  the  soil. 

"Great  complaints  have  been  made  by  the  merchants  trading  in 
that  quarter  that  they  were  not  able  to  compete  with  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.,  and  this  is  the  cry  even  at  home,  but  the  fact  is  the  prices 
were  much  lower  before  these  American  merchants  went  into  the 
country  than  they  are  now. 

"Their  mode  of  dealing  is  to  ask  whatever  their  avarice  demands 
and  the  necessities  of  the  purchaser  will  bear.  And  not  being  satis- 
fied with  an  open  field,  they  have  petitioned  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
to  put  a  higher  price  upon  their  goods,  as  they  were  selling  lower 
than  the  American  merchants  wished  to  sell.  In  accordance  with 
their  request  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  raised  the  price  of  goods  when 
sold  to  an  American,  but  sold  them  at  the  old  prices  to  British  sub- 
jects. This  arrangement  was  continued  for  two  years,  but  an  Amer- 
ican can  now  purchase  at  the  fort  as  cheap  as  any  one.  These  facts 
I  obtained  from  various  sources,  and  when  apprised  of  the  prices  of 
goods  in  that  country  they  were  not  hard  to  be  believed. 

"I  paid  for  a  pair  of  stoga  shoes,  made  in  one  of  the  eastern 
States,  and  a  very  common  article,  four  dollars  and  fifty  cents.  The 
price  for  a  common  coarse  cotton  flag  handkerchief,  which  can  be 
had  in  Cincinnati  for  five  or  ten  cents,  fifty  cents.  The  price  of 
calico  ranges  from  thirty-one  to  eighty-seven  and  a  half  cents  a 
yard ;  common  red  flannel,  |1.50  a  yard ;  a  box  of  percussion  caps 
(containing  two  hundred  and  fifty),  two  dollars  and  fifty  cents; 
coarse  boots,  eastern  made,  six  to  eight  dollars;  calfskin,  ten  to 
twelve  dollars;  coarse  half  hose,  one  dollar;  dry  goods  generally 
ranging  with  the  above  prices.  Iron  was  selling  at  twelve  and  a 
half  cents  a  pound.  Tools  of  all  kinds  are  very  high;  so  that  what- 
ever may  be  said  against  the  company  for  putting  down  the  prices 
to  destroy  competition  by  breaking  up  other  merchants  cannot  be 
'sustained  by  the  facts  of  the  case.'  That  they  prevent  them  from 
raising  the  prices  there  can  be  no  doubt,  and  if  the  American  mer- 


392  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

chants  had  the  field  clear  of  competition  the  prices  would  be  double 
what  they  now  are.  They  have  not  capital  to  enable  them  to  keep 
a  su])ply  nor  to  purchase  the  surplus  of  the  country. 

"The  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  are  the  only  purchasers  to  any  extent, 
for  there  are  no  others  who  have  the  necessary  machinery  to  manu- 
facture wheat,  which  is  the  staple  of  the  country  at  present.  The 
American  merchants  buy  a  few  fish,  hides  and  lumber,  but  in  such 
limited  quantities  as  to  be  of  very  little  advantage  to  the  country. 
A  few  American  merchants  with  a  little  capital  would  give  an  im- 
pulse to  trade,  encourage  the  settlers,  make  it  a  profitable  business 
to  themselves  and  add  much  to  the  character  of  the  country." 

In  Transactions  Oregon  Pioneer  Assn.,  1877,  pp.  4G-59,  is  an 
address  by  Hon.  Stephen  Staats,  one  of  the  1845  migration,  and  on 
p.  52  he  says:  "We  reached  Oregon  City  in  thirteen  days  from  The 
Dalles  (two  of  which  we  were  without  food),  and  on  our  arrival 
those  of  us  in  advance  were  kindly  and  hospitably  received  by  old 
Dr.  McLoughlin.  He  immediately  furnished  us  with  provisions 
without  money  and  without  price,  and  extended  to  us  favors  which 
we  were  ever  ready  to  reciprocate.  I  am  not  one  of  those  who  wish 
to  cast  reflections  on  the  character  of  Dr.  McLoughlin  or  wish  to 
impute  to  him  anything  wanting  in  the  kindest  feelings  toward  the 
emigrants  of  1845.  For  well  do  I  know  that  but  for  him  many 
would  have  been  more  embarrassed  in  making  provision  for  the  com- 
ing winter's  necessities  than  they  were,  and  I  have  yet  to  see  the 
emigrant  of  1845  who,  when  speaking  of  the  "old  man  doctor,"  does 
not  speak  in  high  commendation  of  his  action  toward  the  emigrants 
of  that  year." 

This,  it  should  be  remembered,  was  in  1845,  not  only  after  all 
the  fury  of  the  "fifty-four  forty  or  fight"  campaign  of  1844  had  re- 
sulted in  the  election  of  James  K.  Polk  to  the  Presidency,  but  after 
the  news  of  his  inauguration  and  the  disturbing  paragraph  about 
Oregon  in  his  inaugural  address  had  reached  these  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.'s  officers  in  Oregon,  and  when,  if  ever,  they  might  naturally 
have  been  expected  to  oppose  Americans  settling  in  Oregon. 

As  the  report  of  the  trial  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  the 
Puget's  Sound  Agriculaural  Co.  vs.  the  United  States  is  such  an 
exceedingly  rare  document  that  few  historical  students  can  easily 
get  access  to  it,  it  seems  best  to  copy  here  all  the  testimony  given 
in  that  case  by  all  the  Americans  who  went  to  Oregon  before  1840 
that  bears  upon  the  treatment  Americans  received  from  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  and  that  company's  treatment  of  the  Indians,  together 
with  so  much  of  the  testimony  of  Sir  James  Douglas  and  Archibald 
McKinlay  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  witnesses  as  covers  these  points. 

My  references  to  the  volumes  will  be  as  they  are  numbered  in 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  393 

the  State  Department  Library  at  Washington  (for  they  were  pub- 
lished as  pamphlets,  part  of  them  in  Montreal  and  part  in  Wash- 
ington, and  with  no  volume  numbers). 

I  have  been  able  to  learn  of  the  existence  of  but  four  sets  besides 
my  own,  viz.:  In  the  libraries  of  (1)  the  State  Department  at 
Washington;  (2)  the  Law  Library,  Albany,  N.  Y. ;  (3)  H.  H.  Ban- 
croft's Library,  San  Francisco;  (4)  Yale  College  Library,  New 
Haven,  Conn. 

The  claims  of  these  two  companies  originated  in  the  third  and 
fourth  articles  of  the  treaty  of  1846. 

As  we  have  seen  from  the  testimony  of  Rear  Admiral  Charles 
Wilkes  (Cf.  pp.  356-364  atite)  he,  about  1846,  estimated  the  value  of 
all  these  "possessory  rights,  farms,  lands,  etc.,"  at  a  half  a  million 
dollars,  and  advised  the  representatives  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in 
Washington  to  have  that  amount  inserted  in  the  treaty,  which  they 
declined  to  do,  hoping  to  get  more. 

At  various  times  between  1846  and  1860  the  United  States  Gov- 
ernment sought  to  buy  out  the  claims  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and 
the  Puget's  Sound  Agricultural  Co.  In  1852  Secretary  of  State 
Daniel  Webster  was  willing  to  pay  |1,000,000  in  full  settlement, 
and  probably  but  for  his  untimely  death  in  November,  1852,  a  set- 
tlement would  have  been  made  on  that  basis  (Cf.  Vol.  III.,  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  vs.  United  States,  pp.  222-3). 

The  Indian  wars  in  Eastern  Oregon  in  the  years  1848  to  1859, 
and  the  occupation  of  various  posts  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  by  the 
United  States  troops,  diminished  their  business  and  profits  in  the 
Old  Oregon  Territory,  and  finally,  in  1860,  being  notified  by  Gen. 
Harney,  then  in  command  of  the  United  States  troops  there,  that 
under  the  instructions  of  Secretary  of  War  Floyd  it  became  his 
duty  to  inform  them  that  their  rights  on  American  soil  had  been 
terminated,  they  deemed  it  wise  (in  June,  1860),  to  retire  altogether 
from  the  territory  of  the  United  States,  but  under  protest  to  pre- 
serve their  rights  (Cf.  Vol.  I.,  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  vs.  United  States, 
pp.  189-91,  417). 

Feeling  that  the  United  States  Government  was  depreciating  the 
value  of  their  claims  by  acts  of  hostility  to  which  they  were  power- 
less to  offer  resistance,  and  President  Buchanan  having  in  conversa- 
tion with  Lord  Lyons,  British  Minister  at  Washington,  on  "July  11, 
1860,  suggested  that  the  best  and  most  expeditious  mode  of  set- 
tling the  question  would  be  for  the  companies  to  state  at  once  the 
lowest  sum  for  which  they  would  sell  their  rights  to  the  United 
States,"  Lord  John  Russell  called  on  the  Governor  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.  to  fix  the  amount  which  they  would  ask  for  the  extinction 
of  their  claims;  whereupon  the  Governor  named  |650,000  as  their 


394  ACQLItilTIOy    OF    OREGON 

minimum  price,  but  Lord  Russell  advised  him  in  view  of  all  the 
circunistances  to  reduce  their  claims  to  |5()0,()0(),  which  they  agreed 
to  do,  and  Lord  Lyons  communicated  this  offer  to  Gen.  Lewis  Cass, 
our  Secretary  of  State,  on  December  10,  18G0  (Cf.  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  V8.  United  States,  Vol.  VIL,  pp.  282-4),  and  there  can  be  no 
doubt  but  what  this  offer  would  have  then  been  accepted  but  for 
the  excitement  following  the  election  of  Lincoln  and  the  secession 
movement  during  the  winter  of  18G0-61.  The  claims  still  remain- 
ing a  source  of  great  irritation  between  the  two  nations,  on  July  1, 
18()3,  a  treaty  was  made  between  the  United  States  and  Great  Brit- 
ain, which  provided  for  the  appointment  of  a  commissioner  by  each 
nation,  with  power  for  the  choice  by  them  of  an  umpire,  which  com- 
mission was  to  proceed  to  hear  the  evidence  and  award  the  amount 
due  from  the  T'nited  States  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  Puget's 
Sound  Agricultural  Co.,  which  award  was  to  be  final  and  conclusive, 
and  in  full  payment  of  all  claims  of  every  kind  that  the  two  compa- 
nies had  under  and  by  virtue  of  the  treaty  of  1846.  The  commis- 
sion was  constituted  as  follows: 

Commissioner  on  the  part  of  the  United  States,  Alexander  S. 
Johnson ;  on  the  part  of  Great  Britain,  John  Rose ;  umpire,  Benj.  R. 
Curtis;  counsel,  on  the  part  of  the  United  States,  Caleb  Gushing; 
on  the  i)art  of  Great  Britain,  Charles  Dewey  Day  and  Edward 
Lander. 

The  taking  of  evidence  began  at  Victoria,  Vancouver  Island, 
August  5,  1865,  and  ended  August  24,  1867.  Witnesses  were  exam- 
ined in  liritish  Columbia,  at  several  places  in  Oregon,  and  also  in 
Washington  Territory,  in  IMontreal,  New  York  City,  Detroit,  Mich., 
Washington,  D.  C,  Cincinnati,  Ohio,  New  Orleans,  La.,  Goldsboro, 
N.  C,  the  Tortugas,  and  London,  England.  The  Ignited  States 
called  more  than  100  witnesses,  including  almost  every  prominent 
army  officer  that  had  ever  been  stationed  in  Oregon,  among  them 
Generals  T"^.  S.  Grant,  Phil  Sheridan,  Gordon  Granger,  Alfred  Pleas- 
anton,  Rufus  Ingalls,  James  A.  Hardie,  0.  C.  Augur,  David  H.  Vin- 
ton and  Benj.  Alvord,  also  Admiral  Charles  Wilkes  and  Commander 
CJibson  of  the  United  States  Navy. 

Caleb  Gushing  was  beyond  question  the  best  qualified  man  in  the 
T'nited  States  for  the  post  of  counsel  in  this  case,  not  merely  from 
his  acknowledged  standing  as  one  of  the  ablest  lawyers  in  the  land, 
but  from  his  intimate  connection  with  the  discussion  of  the  Oregon 
boundary  question,  in  Congress  and  out  of  it,  in  the  years  1828  to 
1846. 

In  Chapter  VI.  we  have  mentioned  his  four  articles  in  the  Vor/7i 
American  Revieio,  and  quoted  from  his  famous  report  and  supple- 
mental report  (Cf.  pp.  202-203  ante). 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  395 

At  about  this  time  also  Mr.  Gushing  was  interested  with  some 
other  Massachusetts  men  in  a  cargo  of  merchandise  shipped  to  Ore- 
gon for  trading  purposes,  and  so  came  directly  into  competition  with 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 

In  November,  1845,  in  a  lecture  before  the  Boston  Lyceum 
(which  was  promptly  published  in  this  country  and  republished 
by  William  Clowes  &  Sons,  London,  England),  he  reiterated  very 
forcibly  the  statements  of  his  report  to  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives about  the  ease  of  the  occupation  of  Oregon  by  the  people  of 
the  United  States  and  the  practical  impossibility  of  its  coloniza- 
tion, as  the  world  then  looked,  by  Great  Britain.  (A  copy  of  the 
London  edition  of  this  lecture  is  in  the  Boston  Public  Library,  No. 
2  of  shelf  No.  4478,  31.)  With  all  this  special  preparation  and 
study  of  the  whole  question  of  the  Oregon  Territory,  and  the  rela- 
tion of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  its  settlement  by  Americans,  noth- 
ing is  plainer  than  that  if  Mr.  Gushing  could  have  found  any  trust- 
worthy evidence  of  any  wrongful  acts  by  that  company  toward 
American  missionaries,  explorers  or  settlers,  he  would  have  brought 
forward  the  evidence  thereof,  since  if  they  had,  prior  to  1846,  vio- 
lated the  rights  of  American  citizens  under  the  treaties  of  1818  and 
1827,  and  more  especially  if  any  proof  could  have  been  adduced 
that  they  were  responsible  for  the  Whitman  massacre  (which  took 
place  on  November  29,  1847,  more  than  a  year  after  knowledge  of 
the  treaty  of  1846  had  been  received  there),  he  would  have  been 
able  to  entirely  defeat  their  claims  to  any  compensation  from  our 
Government.  (The  news  of  the  treaty  of  1846  settling  the  boundary 
reached  Oregon  City  and  was  printed  in  an  extra  of  the  Oregon 
Spectator',  a  semi-monthly,  and  then  the  only  paper  published  west 
of  the  Missouri,  for  Thursday,  November  12,  1846.  A  file  of  the 
Spectator  is  in  the  San  Francisco  Public  Library,  where  I  exam- 
ined it.) 

The  claims  presented  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  aggregated  at 
first  13,822,036.67,  and  by  a  motion  to  amend  there  was  added  to 
this  the  sum  of  |459,900,  making  ^,281,936.67  (Cf.  Vol.  III.,  Hud- 
son's Bay  Go.  vs.  United  States,  pp.  14  and  15),  and  the  Puget's 
Sound  Agricultural  Co.  claimed  a  further  sum  of  |1,168,000  (Cf. 
Memorial  of  Pugefs  Sound  Agricultural  Co.,  Vol.  IV.),  making  a 
total  of  $5,449,936.67.  There  was  room  for  much  honest  difference 
of  opinion  as  to  the  value  of  many  of  the  items  of  these  claims,  and 
also  as  to  whether  or  not  the  claimants  had  a  right  to  claim  any- 
thing for  such  items  as  the  rights  to  trade  and  the  right  to  navigate 
the  Columbia,  since  they  continued  to  trade  and  navigate  the  Co- 
lumbia long  after  the  treaty  was  made,  but  finally  the  commission- 
ers, after  one  of  the  most  thorough    judicial    investigations  ever 


396  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

given  to  any  matter  of  dispute,  on  September  10,  18G9,  awarded  to 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  ^50,000  and  the  Puget's  Sound  Agricultural 
Co.  ,?2iM),0(»().  or  in  all  .^OnO.OOO,  which,  it  will  be  noticed,  is  the  pre- 
cise amount  that  the  (Jovernor  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  had  first 
informed  Lord  John  Kussell  was  the  minimum  amount  they  would 
be  willing  to  accept  in  the  autumn  of  18G0. 

Of  the  more  than  2,0U0  pages  of  testimony  in  this  case  by  far 
the  greatest  part  possesses  no  general  interest,  being  merely  esti- 
mates of  the  value  of  the  land  and  the  improvements  thereon  at  the 
several  posts  of  the  company  south  of  49  degrees,  and  the  condition 
of  I  lie  l)uildings  and  the  relations  between  the  company  and  the 
more  uiiscru])ulous  settlers  (some  of  them  Americans  and  some  of 
them  discharged  employes  of  the  companies),  who  had  "squatted" 
on  the  land  claimed  by  the  companies,  and  torn  down  their  fences, 
and  stolen  their  cattle;  and  of  the  futile  efforts  of  the  companies  to 
secure  redress  from  the  frontier  courts,  which  they  soon  found  to 
be  "places  where  justice  was  dispensed  with"  whenever  a  "free 
American  citizen"  or  any  other  ''squatter"  was  defendant  and  the 
''blasted  British  monopoly"  was  plaintiff. 

The  nudson's  Bay  Co.  were  at  great  disadvantage  from  the 
death  of  most  of  those  who  were  thoroughly  conversant  with  all 
the  facts  which  they  desired  to  establish — Dr.  McLoughlin,  Peter 
Skeen  Ogden,  James  Birnie,  P.  C.  Pambrun,  F.  Ermatinger,  Paul 
Frazer,  John  D.  B.  Ogilvy,  Adolphus  Lee  Lewes,  John  McLeod, 
Thomas  McKay,  X.  Payette  and  Archibald  McDonald  all  had  died 
before  the  trial  began. 

Whether  or  not  their  evidence  would  have  increased  the  amount 
of  the  award  no  one  can  tell,  but  certainly  if  they  or  even  McLough- 
lin. Ogden,  Birnie,  Pambrun,  Ermatinger,  McLeod  and  McKay  had 
lieen  living  a  tlood  of  light  would  have  been  thrown  upon  many 
points  of  great  interest  to  all  students  of  Oregon  history. 

Let  us  examine  such  points  in  the  testimony  of  the  witnesses  as 
bear  upon  the  subject  of  this  chapter. 

Si  I-  .liiines  Douglas,  who,  with  P.  S.  Ogden,  was  in  charge  of  the 
business  of  the  company  in  Oregon  after  the  resignation  of  Dr. 
McLoughlin  in  the  autumn  of  1845,  and  who  subsequently  was  the 
Ciovernor  of  Vancouver  Island,  and  who  had  no  connection  with  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  after  1850,  testified  at  Victoria,  Vancouver 
Island,  August  10,  1805,  as  follows  (Hudson's  Bay  Co.  vs.  United 
States,  Vol.  I.,  pp.  49-61)  : 

"Int.  13.  'State  if  you  can  what  was  done  by  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  in  exploring  the  country,  opening  roads,  improving  the  Indians, 
and  assisting  the  early  settlers  in  Oregon.' 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  397 

''Ans.  'The  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  were  certainly  put  to  a  very  great 
expense  in  exploring  the  country,  in  making  roads,  in  establishing 
an  efifective  control  over  the  Indian  tribes  and  bringing  them  into 
friendly  relations  with  the  whites,  and  thus  rendering  the  country 
habitable  for  settlers;  substantial  benefits,  which,  judging  from  the 
precedents  afforded  by  the  settlement  of  the  territory  of  the  United 
States  of  America,  and  of  Her  Majesty's  Colonies,  are  never  attained 
without  great  sacrifice  of  life  and  a  large  outlay  of  money.  A  ref- 
erence to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  books  will  prove  that  besides  the 
general  kindness  extended  to  the  first  American  settlers  who  trav- 
eled by  the  overland  route  to  Oregon,  material  aid  was  largely  dis- 
pensed to  them  in  clothing,  agricultural  implements  and  seed  grain, 
without  which  they  could  hardly  have  succeeded  in  establishing  the 
country.  If  my  memory  serves  me  right  the  value  of  the  supplies 
furnished  to  these  early  settlers  amounted  to  a  very  large  sum, 
and  I  am  informed  that  a  large  portion  of  it  has  never  been  repaid.' 

"Cross  Examination. 

"Int.  25.  'Do  you  not  know  that  the  officers  and  servants  of  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  were  careful  to  impress  the  minds  of  the  natives 
with  the  difference  between  Englishmen,  called  "King  George's 
Men,"  and  Americans,  known  as  "Boston  Men,"  and  that  in  the 
wars  or  difficulties  with  the  Indians  this  operated  to  the  prejudice 
of  the  American  settlers  and  authorities?' 

"Ans.  'On  the  contrary,  the  very  reverse  of  that  is  the  case.  I 
can  attest  that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  invariably  exerted  all  their 
influence  to  protect  white  men  of  every  nationality,  and  would 
have  given  the  shelter  of  their  establishments  to  an  American  citi- 
zen equally  with  their  own  countrymen.  The  distinctions  known 
among  the  Indians  as  to  the  nationality  of  the  English  and  Ameri- 
cans was  not  derived  from  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  but,  I  believe, 
from  American  citizens  themselves.' 

"Int.  26.  'Is  it  true  that  it  was  with  great  difficulty  the  Gov- 
ernor and  Directors  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  London  were  im- 
pressed with  the  change  in  affairs  on  this  coast  in  the  settlement 
of  the  country ;  and  did  not  Dr.  McLoughlin  have  much  trouble  and 
annoyance  in  settling  his  accounts  because  he  had  encouraged  such 
settlements,  instead  of  devoting  himself  to  the  fur  trade  ex- 
clusively?' 

"Ans.  'I  am  not  aware  that  the  Directors  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.,  whatever  may  have  been  their  private  opinions,  ever  opposed 
the  settlement  of  the  country  or  issued  orders  to  that  effect  to  their 
agents  here;  neither  have  I  ever  heard  before  the  present  time  that 
Dr.  McLoughlin  had  been  held  responsible  in  any  manner  for  sup- 
plies furnished  or  encouragement  given  to  settlers  from  the  United 


398  ACQUISITIOX    OF    OREGON 

States'"  (Hudson's  Bay  Co.  is.  United  States,  Vol.  I.,  pp.  54-55,  60- 
r,n. 

Arihibald  McKinlay,  the  staunch  Scotch  Presbyterian,  who  was 
in  charfje  of  Fort  WaUa  Walla  from  July,  1841,  to  February,  1846, 
testified  August  24,  1865  {Idem,  pp.  72-104)  : 

(P.  78)  "Int.  20.  'What  was  the  conduct  of  the  Indians  toward 
the  whites  passin*,'  tliroiiph  the  Snake  country?' 

'^Ans.  '\'ery  inoll'ensive  and  kind  to  the  whites.  I  should  not 
have  been  afraid  to  travel  myself  or  allow  any  of  my  men  to  travel 
alone  throujrh  that  country  from  Fort  Hall  to  Vancouver,  or  in  any 
direction  as  far  northwest  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  as  Babine  Lake 
in  British  Columbia.' 

(P.  70)  "Int.  23.  'Where  did  you  go  after  leaving  Fort  Nez 
Perces  in  1846,  and  where  did  you  reside  the  greater  portion  of  the 
time  before  you  left  the  employ  of  the  company;  in  what  business 
were  you  engaged  for  a  portion  of  the  time  after  leaving  the  com- 
pany, and  where  did  you  reside?' 

''Ans.  'I  left  Xez  Perces  (/.  e.,  Fort  Walla  Walla)  early  in 
February,  1846,  and  I  think  I  arrived  at  Vancouver  on  the  25th  of 
the  same  month,  and  remained  at  Vancouver  until  I  went  to  Ore- 
gon City  between  the  13th  and  20th  of  March,  and  took  charge  of 
the  comi)any's  business  there,  and  remained  there  until  the  20th  of 
Ai)ril,  1849.  My  furlough  began  and  I  was  absent  from  the  coun- 
try until  June,  and  returned  to  Vancouver,  and  remained  there  un- 
til I  went  into  business  in  Oregon  City  as  commission  and  general 
merchant,  in  partnership  with  George  T.  Allan  and  Thomas  Lowe, 
under  the  firm  name  of  Allan,  McKinlay  &  Co.,  and  continued  in 
partnership  until  the  fall  of  1861.  The  latter  part  of  this  time  the 
business  was  carried  on  at  the  mill  at  Champoeg.  The  partnership 
in  real  proi)erty  continued  until  the  spring  of  1863.  During  the 
greater  i)art  of  this  time  I  was  at  Vancouver  as  often  as  once  or 
twice  a  month,  and  when  in  commission  business  went  there  often.' 

"Cross-examination. 

(P.  00)  "Int.  16.  'Do  you  not  know  that  a  white  man  was 
killed  by  the  Indians  in  the  Snake  country  in  1841;  and  did  not 
llic  coiiipany  alwa^'s  have  an  armed  escort  with  their  brigades  go- 
ing up  and  coming  back  between  Fort  Vancouver  and  Fort  Hall? 
Would  you  have  us  believe  that  all  the  stories  of  perilous  adventure 
by  trappers  and  travelers  of  which  we  have  read  are  made  out  of 
whole  cloth?' 

"Ans.  'The  man  was  killed,  not  in  the  Snake  country,  but  at 
Kamloops,  in  Brifish  Columbia.  This  was  not  the  result  of  general 
hostility  among  the  Indians,  but  a  personal  difficulty  with  one  man 
growing  out  of  a  su])erstition  of  the  Indian  with  reference  to  medi- 
cine.   After  this  I  traveled  all  through  that  country  in  a  company 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  399 

of  three  and  could  have  traveled  alone  equally  well.  The  servants 
of  the  company  accompanying  the  brigades  were  not  generally  re- 
quired to  carry  arms ;  many  did  so  for  the  purpose  of  shooting  game 
and  defending  themselves  if  necessary.  I  have  heard  of  armed  es- 
corts being  used  at  times,  but  never  saw  one.' 

(P.  93)  ''Int.  39.  'Do  you  not  believe  from  the  statements  of 
emigrants  and  the  agents  of  the  company  that  the  boats  in  1844 
were  not  furnished  to  the  emigrants,  but  were  furnished  to  un- 
principled Americans,  who  proceeded  to  charge  the  emigrants  for 
their  passage  and  freight  down  the  river,  which  was  in  many  cases 
collected?' 

''Ans.  'In  1844  some  men  who  had  crossed  the  plains  came  to 
Vancouver  and  represented  that  the  emigrants  were  suffering  for 
means  to  get  down  the  river.  Dr.  McLoughlin,  who  was  then  in 
charge,  gave  them  the  company's  boats,  they  saying  they  would  vol- 
unteer to  take  them  up  and  assist  the  emigrants.  The  boats  made 
a  number  of  trips,  Dr.  McLoughlin  understanding  that  all  was 
gratuitous.  I  afterward  understood,  however,  that  those  who  re- 
ceived the  boats  did  charge  some  of  the  emigrants  for  their  passage.' 

(Pp.  103-4)  "Int.  11.  'Have  you  not  heard  Dr.  John  McLough- 
lin state  that  he  had  difficulty  with  the  officials  of  the  company  in 
London  in  (p.  104)  settling  his  accounts,  because  of  the  credits 
given  to  settlers,  and  that  he  was  charged  with  some  part  of  this 
indebtedness  because  he  had  suffered  it  to  be  barred  by  the  statute 
of  limitations?' 

"Ans.    'I  have  not;  he  knew  better.' 

"Int.  12.  'Was  not  much  of  the  indebtedness  which  remained 
unpaid  due  from  the  Canadian  French  settlers  who  came  before  the 
general  migration  to  Oregon;  and  was  not  some  due  from  dis- 
charged servants  of  the  company?' 

"Ans.  'To  the  best  of  my  recollection  a  part  of  the  unpaid  debts 
were  due  from  such  persons,  but  I  think  their  proportion  was 
small.' " 

Mr.  McKinlay  retired  from  the  service  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
in  1851  and  became  a  naturalized  American  citizen. 

We  have  already  examined  the  testimony  of  Admiral  Wilkes 
and  M.  T.  Simmons"^  (Cf.  pp.  1.  356-358,  1.  386-387  ante). 

Let  us  now  examine  that  of  the  various  witnesses  summoned  for 
the  United  States  who  went  to  Oregon  before  1846,  taking  them  in 
the  order  of  their  arrival  there. 

The  first  was  the  noted  Joseph  L.  Meek  (whose  ride  to  the  States 
from  Oregon,  starting  on  January  4,  1848,  was  a  vastly  more  daring 
deed  than  Whitman's  ride).  His  testimony  is  found  in  Vol.  V., 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  vs.  United  States,  pp.  62-97. 


4(i(»  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGOX 

As  an  American  trapper,  enijdoyed  from  1829  to  1835  by  Smith, 
Sublette  and  Jackson  and  the  Kocky  Mountain  Fur  Co.,  and  for 
tive  years  thereafter  as  a  free  trapper  in  the  eastern  part  of  the  Old 
Orej^on  Territory,  he  naturally  had  a  very  strong  prejudice  against 
the  Hudson's  Hay  Co..  which  appeared  throughout  his  direct  ex- 
amination, but  being  an  honest  man,  on  cross-examination,  when 
questions  were  put  that  compelled  him  to  think  carefully,  he  put 
aside  his  prejudices.  He  was  the  first  United  States  Marshal  for 
the  Oregon  Territory,  holding  that  office  nearly  five  years,  oflQciat- 
ing  as  such  at  the  trial  and  execution  of  the  Indians  who  were 
found  guilty  of  the  Whitman  nuissacre.  Knowing  all  the  evidence 
adduced  at  that  trial,  his  own  daughter  having  been  one  of  the  cap- 
tives then  made  by  the  Indians  and  rescued  a  month  later  by  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  if  any  one  knew  anything  about  the  causes  of 
that  sad  tragedy  it  was  Col.  Meek,  and  had  there  existed  any  evi- 
dence showing  that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  or  the  Catholics  insti- 
gated it  or  were  in  any  way  responsible  for  it,  Meek  would  have 
known  it  and  surely  would  have  used  it  in  his  testimony  to  defeat 
the  claim  of  that  company  for  compensation  by  the  United  States, 
but  not  a  word  of  any  such  stuff  appears  in  the  following,  which  is 
all  of  his  testimony  bearing  on  the  relation  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
to  the  American  exploration,  occupation  and  settlement  of  Oregon : 

''Int.  3.  'When  did  you  first  come  on  to  the  western  slope  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  and  in  what  capacity?' 

"Ans.  'In  the  month  of  August,  1829 ;  in  the  capacity  of  hunter 
and  trapper.' 

"Int.  4.  'How  long  did  you  follow  that  business,  and  in  what 
sections  of  the  country?' 

"Ans.  'I  followed  it  nearly  eleven  years;  we  was  bounded,  gen- 
erally, on  the  west  by  the  Blue  ^Mountains;  on  the  east,  by  the  forks 
of  the  Platte;  south,  by  the  river  Gila,  and  north,  by  the  north 
branches  of  the  Missouri,  and  into  the  Okanagan  country.' 

"Int.  7.  'What  influence  did  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  exercise 
over  the  Indians  in  the  section  where  you  operated,  with  reference 
to  American  trappers  and  traders ;  state  such  facts  as  occur  to  you 
in    tins  connection?' 

•Ans.  'The  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  exercised  a  great  influence  over 
the  western  Indians — that  is,  the  Cayuses,  Nez  Perces,  Flatheads 
and  S|>okanes,  and  through  there;  they  had  no  influence  over  the 
Indians  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  at  all  and  way  south.  They 
could  do  almost  anything  with  the  Indians.  I  know  of  one  party 
that  was  robbed  by  the  orders  of  one  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  men, 
the  commander  of  Fort  Walla  Walla;  the  party  was  robbed  and  the 
furs  biought  back  to  the  post  and  sold.    I  was  not  with  that  party;; 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  401 

that  was  my  understanding  about  the  matter;  that  was  what  the 
Indians  said,  and  what  the  whites  said  that  was  robbed.' 

"Int.  14.  'In  the  early  settlement  of  the  agricultural  lands  of 
the  Willamette  Valley,  and  what  was  then  Oregon  generally,  what 
encouragement  or  discouragement  was  experienced  by  Americans 
from  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.?' 

"Ans.  'When  I  first  came  down,  in  1840,  they  discouraged  set- 
tlements by  the  Americans,  that  is  especially  north  of  the  Colum- 
bia River;  they  expected  the  Columbia  River  to  be  the  boundary 
line ;  they  would  not  let  us  go  north  of  the  Columbia  River,  but  al- 
ways advised  us  to  go  south  into  the  Willamette  Valle3\  There 
were  some  men  that  got  cattle;  Mr.  Walker  and  Mr.  Doty  got  cat- 
tle ;  there  were  but  five  or  six  of  us  here  then ;  they  got  oxen  and 
cows.' 

"Int.  15.  'Were  cattle  sold  or  loaned  to  the  settlers;  if  loaned, 
upon  what  terms?' 

"Ans.  'They  Avere  loaned,  not  sold;  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  had 
no  cattle  to  sell ;  they  were  to  return  the  cattle  with  the  increase.' 

"Int.  16.  'Up  to  what  date  did  the  company  continue  to  dis- 
courage the  settlement  of  Americans  in  Oregon?' 

"Ans.     'Up  to  about  1843  or  1844.' 

"Int.  17.  'What  condition,  if  any,  did  the  company  impose  upon 
you,  and  those  settlers  with  you  in  the  Tualitin  plains,  before  they 
gave  their  consent?' 

"Ans.  'The  condition  was  that  we  were  to  let  the  Indians  alone ; 
not  to  raise  no  fuss  with  them,  and  not  to  trade  with  them — that 
is,  for  furs.' 

"Int.  19.  'What,  in  your  judgment,  caused  the  change  in  the 
tactics  of  the  company  in  1843-44,  with  reference  to  American  set- 
tlers?' 

"Ans.  'I  thought  it  was  on  account  of  the  emigration,  so  many 
coming  in  here,  and  the  American  squadron  having  just  been  here.' 

"Cross-examination. 

"Int.  1.  'State  whether  the  influence  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
over  the  Indians  was  not  salutary  and  beneficial.' 

"Ans.    'Certainly  it  was  in  all  this  lower  country.' 

"Int.  2.  'Was  not  that  influence  exerted  uniformly  and  promptly 
for  the  protection  of  the  early  immigrants  and  settlers?' 

"Ans.     'It  certainly  was.' 

"Int.  3.  'Can  you  give  the  names  of  the  party  who  said  they 
were  robbed  by  the  orders  of  one  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  men?' 

"Ans.  'I  can,  some  of  their  names — Wilkins,  Robinson  and  Mc- 
Dofy,  three  of  them  I  remember  well.' 

"Int.  4.    'In  whose  employ  were  these  men  at  the  time?' 


402  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

"Aus.     'Captain  Wyeth's.' 

"lut.  5.  'State  the  time,  place  and  circumstances  of  this  al- 
lejjed  robbery.' 

"Ans.  '1  don't  think  I  can  exactly;  it  must  have  been  in  1834 
or  1835;  I  think  they  told  me  it  was  on  the  head  waters  of  Day's 
River;  I  don't  know  what  the  circumstances  were.' 

-Int.  G.  'Who  was  at  that  time  the  commander  of  Fort  Walla 
Walla?' 

"Ans.     'Mr.  Pambrun.' 

"Int.  7.    'Did  you  ever  hear  him  say  anything  about  the  matter?' 

"Ans.    'Never  a  word.' 

"Int.  8.    'Did  you  see  him  frequently  after  it  occurred?' 

"Ans.    'I  seen  him,  not  very  frequently,  though  several  times.' 

"Int.  9.    'Did  you  ever  ask  him  anything  in  regard  to  it?' 

"Ans.    'Never;  I  don't  think  I  ever  did.' 

"Int.  10.  'Did  the  men  who  said  they  had  been  robbed  state 
any  reason  for  such  an  order  of  Mr.  Pambrun?' 

"Ans.  'They  stated  various  reasons  about  it;  the  main  reason 
that  they  said  was  because  they  wouldn't  trade  their  beaver  with 
Mr.  Paiiibruii  at  Walla  Walla.  Another  reason  was  that  one  of  the 
men  had  stolen  a  woman  from  W'alla  Walla  and  run  off  with  her. 
What  we  call  stealing  a  woman  is  taking  a  wife  when  you  can  get 
her;  that's  what  we  call  petit  larceny  in  the  mountains.' 

"Int.  11.  'Was  not  the  capture  or  stealing  of  a  woman  regarded 
by  the  Indians  as  an  act  of  hostility,  provoking  their  revenge?' 

"Ans.  'If  she  had  been  stolen  from  the  Indians  it  would  have 
been  considered  so  by  them ;  but  as  she  was  stolen  from  the  whites, 
the  Indians,  generally,  had  nothing  to  do  with  it.' 

"Int.  12.    'From  whom  was  this  woman  stolen?' 

"Ans.  'I  think  she  was  stolen  from  some  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
men.' 

"Int.  13.    'Was  she  recaptured  by  the  Indian  party?' 

".\ns.     'I  lliink  not.' 

"Int.  14.  'Was  not  the  attack  upon  these  men  under  the  circum- 
stances generally  regarded  among  mountain  men  as  an  act  of  jus- 
tice?' 

"Ans.    'I  think  not,  sir;  no,  sir.' 

"Int.  15.  'Do  you  know  whether  any  of  the  principal  officers  of 
the  company  approved  of  that  act?' 

"Ans.  'All  that  I  ever  heard  sj)eak  of  it  condemned  it — that  is, 
the  principal  officers,  the  bourgeois.' 

"Int.  16.  'Did  you  ever  hear  that  Mr.  Pambrun  ordered  it,  ex- 
cept from  the  men  who  were  robbed?' 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  403 

"Ans.  'I  heard  it  from  the  Indians,  the  nation  that  done  it,  and 
the  men,  that  is  all  I  ever  heard  say  so.' 

"Int.  17.    'What  tribe  did  it?' 

"Ans.     'The  Cayuses  and  Walla  Wallas,  I  think.' 

"Int.  18.  'Do  you  not  know  that  Indians  are  very  artful  in  mak- 
ing up  stories  of  that  sort  to  shield  themselves?' 

"Ans.  'Yes,  Indians  are  very  artful  in  making  up  stories,  but 
there  are  not  many  of  those  Indians  that  dare  make  up  a  story 
against  a  Hudson's  Bay  bourgeois  at  those  times.' 

"Int.  22.  'Do  you  believe  that  this  alleged  robbery  would  have 
taken  place  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  stealing  of  the  Indian  woman?' 

"Ans.    'I  do  not  know  whether  it  would  or  not.' 

"Int.  23.  'Were  not  most  of  the  troubles  between  the  mountain 
men  and  the  Indians  caused  by  quarrels  about  Indian  women?' 

"Ans.     'No,  sir.' 

"Int.  24.    'Was  not  that  a  cause  of  difficulty  in  many  instances?' 

"Ans.     'I  think  not,  sir;  no,  sir.' 

"Int.  25.  'Did  you  ever  hear  of  any  other  robbery,  such  as  this 
mentioned,  in  which  any  blame  was  imputed  by  rumor  or  otherwise 
to  any  officer  of  the  company?' 

"Ans.    'I  think  not;  no,  sir.' 

"Int.  28.  'Do  you  not  believe  that  the  great  reason  why  the 
Indians  respected  and  feared  the  company  and  its  men  was  because 
of  their  knowledge  that  the  company  had  power  to  punish  any 
wrong;  and  also  because  the  company  had  always  instructed  its 
agents  to  act  fairly  and  justly  toward  the  Indians?' 

"Ans.  'The  upper  Indians  had  no  knowledge  of  the  kind,  except 
by  the  company  cutting  off  their  supplies  when  they  did  wrong. 
Some  time  after  Fort  Hall  fell  into  the  company's  hands  they  had 
complete  dominion  over  that  country,  Indians  and  all.  I  think  they 
always  instructed  their  agents  to  act  fairly  toward  the  Indians. 
The  name  of  the  company  passed  me  through  to  Fort  Bridger  in 
1848;  when  the  Indians  came  to  me  I  told  them  that  Tom  McKay 
was  behind  with  a  large  party,  going  to  Fort  Hall  to  trade ;  I  wore 
the  Hudson's  Bay  dress  out  and  out.' 

"Int.  29.  'Was  this  trip,  in  1848,  the  one  you  made  as  messen- 
ger to  the  United  States  Government  to  ask  aid  in  suppressing  hos- 
tilities?' 

"Ans.     'Yes,  sir.' 

"Int.  30.  'Did  not  the  officers  of  the  company,  at  all  its  posts, 
do  everything  in  their  power  for  your  protection,  convenience  and 
comfort  on  that  trip?' 

"Ans.  'Yes,  sir;  I  had  an  order  from  Dr.  McLoughlin  to  that 
amount.' 


404  ACQUnslTWX    OF    OREGON 

*'Int.  33.  'Did  not  the  rnynso  war  follow  as  the  consequence  of 
the  massacre  of  Dr.  Wliituian  and  liis  family?' 

''Ans.     'Yes,  sir;  that  was  the  cause  of  the  Cayuse  war.' 

"Int.  34.    'State  who  rescued  the  survivors  of  that  massacre.' 

"Ans.  'Peter  Skeen  Ogden,  Chief  Factor  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.' 

"Int.  35.  'Did  lie  not  ^o  up,  personally,  with  a  compau}-  before 
the  Provisional  Government  had  time  to  act  in  the  matter?' 

"Ans.  'Yes,  sir;  when  the  news  arrived  at  Vancouver  he  equipjjed 
a  party  and  went  direct  up  in  person  and  bought  the  survivors  and 
brought  them  down ;  he  gave  presents  to  the  Indians ;  I  think  there 
were  about  sixty  came  down  in  the  boats.' 

''Int.  36.  'When  you  say  that  the  company  discouraged  settle- 
ments north  of  the  Columbia  River,  state  whether  it  was  not  on  the 
ground  that  if  the  land  north  of  the  Columbia  should  be  assigned 
to  Great  Britain,  American  settlers  might  lose  their  nationality.' 

"Ans.  'I  don't  know  about  that;  I  know  they  would  not  let  us 
settle  on  the  north  side;  so  far  as  nationality  was  concerned,  I  don't 
think  they  cared  anything  about  it.' 

"Int.  37.  'Did  they  hinder  settlers  going  north  of  the  Colum- 
bia, except  upon  lands  which  they  claimed  to  occupy?' 

"Ans.  '1  think  not,  sir;  they  claimed  the  whole  country,  though, 
north  of  the  Columbia?' 

"Int.  41.  'Did  not  the  company  advise  settlers  to  go  to  the  Wil- 
lamette Valley,  so  that  being  together  they  might  be  better  enabled 
to  protect  themselves  from  Indian  hostilities?' 

"Ans.  'They  always  advised  them  to  go  to  the  Willamette,  but 
I  always  thought  it  was  to  keep  them  out  of  their  way  at  Vancou- 
ver and  from  settling  that  country.' 

"Int.  42.  'Was  not  the  land  in  the  Willamette  as  good  as  that 
north  of  the  (vOlumbia?'' 

"Ans.  'I  think  the  land  in  the  Willamette  as  good  as  that  north 
of  the  Columbia  for  raising  wheat.' 

"Int.  43.  'Was  not  one  reason  stated  by  Dr.  McLoughlin  for  his 
advice  that  if  they  scattered  about  they  would  be  in  greater  danger?' 

"Ans.    'That  was  one  of  his  reasons.' 

"Int.  44.  'Do  you  not  now  believe  that  the  advice  given  by  Dr. 
McT>onghlin  to  the  settlers  was  the  best  for  their  interests  that  he 
could  give?' 

"Ans.  '1  tliink  his  advice  was  pretty  good  then,  but  it  has  proved 
very  bad  since.' 

"Int.  45.     'How  has  it  proved  bad?' 

"Ans.  'The  first  settlers  were  deprived  of  the  most  valuable  part 
of  the  country.' 

"Int.  40.    'Which  was  that?' 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  405 

^'Ans.  'That  was  all  the  lower  country,  places  near  to  the  river, 
along  the  Willamette,  below  the  falls;  but  I  believe  the  doctor 
meant  his  advice  for  the  good  of  the  settlers  at  the  time.' 

"Int.  47.  'Why  were  the  lands  along  the  Willamette  River  be- 
low the  falls  the  most  valuable  lands  in  Oregon?' 

''Ans.  'It  is  so  near  to  market  and  conveniences  of  getting  to 
them;  but  I  must  add  that  they  didn't  look  so  convenient  in  those 
days  as  they  do  now  with  big  farms  and  towns  on  them.' 

"Int.  48.    'Have  not  the  markets  all  grown  up  since  that  time?' 

"Ans.  'No,  sir;  the  wheat  market  was  better  that  day  than  it 
is  now.' 

"Int.  49.  'Were  not  prairie  lands  which  produced  wheat  more 
valuable  to  the  settlers  than  heavily  timbered  lands  on  the  river 
banks?' 

"Ans.    'They  were,  at  that  time,  to  raise  wheat  on.' 

"Int.  50.  'Were  they  not  for  everything  which  it  was  profitable 
to  raise?' 

"Ans.     'Yes,  sir.' 

"Int.  51.  'Did  you  not,  in  1850-1851,  write  a  letter  to  Dr.  John 
McLoughlin,  in  reply  to  some  questions  sent  to  you  by  him,  stating 
that  his  conduct  while  at  the  head  of  the  company  had  greatly  pro- 
moted the  welfare  and  prosperity  of  the  early  settlers,  and  that  but 
for  him  you  did  not  believe  the  settlers  could  have  got  through  with 
their  difficulties,  or  words  to  that  effect?' 
'    "Ans.    'I  think  I  did,  sir.' 

"Int.  52.  'Did  not  Lucier  and  others  take  lands  along  the  river, 
below  the  Willamette  falls,  and  afterward  abandon  them  and  move 
to  the  upper  prairies?' 

"Ans.    'I  think  they  did;  I  have  heard  so.' 

"Int.  53.  'Do  you  know  of  any  instance  in  which  the  company 
refused  to  furnish  stock  to  a  respectable  settler  worthy  of  credit?' 

"Ans.     'I  don't  think  I  do,  sir.' 

"Int.  54.  'Do  you  know  of  its  refusing  to  furnish  supplies  to 
emigrants  or  settlers  who  were  worthy  of  credit?' 

"Ans.  'Some  they  furnished  with  supplies,  some  they  did  not; 
that  is,  certain  kinds  of  supplies.  If  a  man  would  take  a  claim,  he 
could  get  seed  wheat,  plows,  hoes,  harrows,  teeth,  and  so  on,  if  he 
would  show  a  disposition  to  go  to  work  to  raise  wheat,  which  they 
was  the  only  market  for.' 

"Int.  55.  'Was  not  that  market,  if  the  only  one,  better  than 
none?' 

"Ans.  'Yes,  it  was  better  than  it  is  today,  as  far  as  supplies  are 
concerned.' 


406  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

''Int.  58.  'Did  you  know  anythinp;  of  Jedediah  Smith,  who  was 
trading  and  trapping  in  Southern  Oregon?  State  what  you  know 
of  his  rescue,  if  anything;  by  whom,  and  when  it  was  made.' 

"Ans.  'I  know  Jedediah  Smith  very  well,  having  served  under 
him  in  the  Kocky  Mountains;  I  think  the  rescue  was  made  in  1828, 
by  Mr.  McCloud  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  In  1829  I  was  detailed 
by  the  com})any,  in  whose  service  I  was,  to  hunt  for  him ;  we 
crossed  the  Kocky  Mountains,  and  found  him  in  Pierre's  Hole,  on 
the  head  of  Snake  River,  with  a  party.  He  came  and  joined  the 
company  then — the  company  of  Smith,  Jackson  and  Sublette— he 
was  one  of  the  partners ;  he  told  me  that  he  had  been  defeated  at 
the  crossing  of  Rogue  River,  all  his  men  killed  but  three,  I  think; 
he  made  his  wa}'  to  Vancouver,  and  the  company  equipped  and  sent 
out  a  party  to  get  his  property  and  rescue  any  of  the  party  that 
might  be  left;  I  think  he  remained  the  winter  of  1828  with  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co. ;  in  the  summer  of  1829  we  met  him  on  Snake 
River.' 

"Int.  59.    'How  much  of  his  property  was  rescued,  if  you  know?' 

"Ans.  'That  I  do  not  know,  how  much ;  there  were  various 
statements  made  about  it;  I  don't  remember  exactly  what  Smith 
said;  I  think  he  said  very  little  was  recovered;  some  beaver  and 
horses,  mostly  beaver.' 

"Int.  GO.  'How  large  a  party  was  sent  out  for  this  purpose,  and 
how  long  were  they  absent?' 

"Ans.  'I  don't  know  exactly  how  many  there  were  in  the  party; 
Smith  said,  I  think,  there  were  forty  or  fifty  men ;  I  think  they  were 
under  the  command  of  Thomas  McKay;  and  he  said  he  was  going 
to  kill  all  the  Indians  out  there ;  and  the  order  was  countermanded 
and  ^fr.  McCloud  was  sent  in  his  place;  I  don't  remember  how  long; 
I  think  they  were  out  several  months;  Smith  and  Black  told  me 
often,  but  I  don't  remember.' 

"Int.  01.  'Did  not  Smith  express  great  gratitude  to  the  com- 
pany because  it  had  done  so  much  for  him,  especially  as  he  was  a 
rival  fur  trader?' 

"Ans.  'Smith  always  expressed  great  gratitude  to  the  company 
for  the  act  they  had  done.' 

"Int.  02.    'Did  he  say  whether  it  was  done  without  any  charge?' 

"Ans.  'Smith  always  said  it  was  done  without  any  charge,  but 
it  was  always  disj)uted  by  the  other  ])artners,  so  much  so  that  they 
dissolved  and  sold  out  the  next  summer  to  the  Rocky  Mountain 
Fur  Co.  and  formed  a  new  firm.' 

"Int.  75.    'How  long  did  you  remain  at  Fort  Hall  at  that  time?' 

"Ans.  'I  think  I  was  there  three  days;  it  generally  took  one 
to  get  drunk  and  two  to  get  sober.' 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  407 

"Int.  98.  'Was  not  Fort  Hall  a  place  of  general  resort  for  emi- 
grants when  they  began  to  come  to  Oregon  and  California?' 

"Ans.    'I  think  it  was,  sir;  they  generally  passed  Fort  Hall.' 

''Int.  99.  'Did  not  the  position  of  that  fort  in  the  Indian  coun- 
try have  the  effect  of  protecting  the  emigrant  route?' 

"Ans.  'I  think  it  had,  sir ;  I  suppose  it  was  a  great  protection 
to  the  emigrant  route.' 

"Int.  100.  'Was  not  the  same  true  of  Forts  Boise  and  Walla 
Walla?' 

"Ans.  'I  don't  think  Fort  Boise  was  of  any  consequence  at  all, 
except  the  name  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. ;  that  was  a  protection 
along  there.  The  emigrants  hardly  ever  came  by  Walla  Walla,  but 
I  presume  it  was  a  protection.' 

"Int.  107.  'In  your  judgment  would  not  the  emigrants,  in  all 
probability,  have  had  trouble  with  the  Snake  Indians  at  Boise  but 
for  the  fact  that  the  company  had  a  fort  there?' 

"Ans.  'They  might  have  had  trouble  there;  it  was  a  trouble- 
some country  along  there  for  emigrants.' 

"Int.  159.  'While  Marshal  of  the  United  States  for  Oregon, 
from  1849  to  1853,  where  did  you  find  rooms  for  the  courts  at 
Vancouver?' 

"Ans.  'I  found  rooms  in  Fort  Vancouver;  I  got  them  from  the 
Chief  Factor  in  charge.' 

"Int.  160.    'Was  their  use  furnished  gratuitously?' 

"Ans.  'I  have  no  vouchers  for  money  paid  by  me  for  the  use 
of  those  rooms,  no  charge  having  been  made  for  their  use.' 

"Int.  161.  'Did  not  Mr.  Ogden,  Chief  Factor,  tell  you  that  you 
were  welcome  to  use  them  whenever  you  wanted  them?' 

"Ans.    'Yes,  sir;  Mr.  Ogden  was  very  clever  in  that  respect' 

"Int.  162.  'In  your  official  life  state  whether  you  found  any 
residents  of  Oregon  more  prompt  and  willing  to  assist  you  when 
necessary  than  the  officers  of  the  company?' 

"Ans.  'No,  sir;  I  never  found  any  that  was  more  prompt  than 
the  officers  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.' 

"Direct  examination  resumed : 

"Int.  4.  'How  many  settlers,  in  1840  and  1841,  were  able  to  get 
seed  wheat  of  the  company?' 

"Ans.  'I  do  not  know ;  most  any  man  could  get  seed  wheat  that 
showed  a  disposition  to  make  a  farm  and  raise  wheat.' 

"Int.  5.  'What  condition,  if  any,  did  the  company  seek  to  im- 
pose upon  those  receiving  seed  wheat?' 

"Ans.  'They  imposed  the  condition  that  they  would  pay  it  back 
again.' 

"Int.  6.  'Do  you  know  of  any  farmer  who  was  refused  seed 
grain  by  them?    If  so,  state  who  it  was.' 


408  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

"AuH.  'I  know  some  that  were  refused  seed  grain;  Mr.  George 
Davis,  Joseph  L.  Meek ;  I  think,  tliongh.  there  were  several  others.' 

"Int.  7.  'State  whether  you  and  these  otlier  men  took  claims 
and  wanted  to  make  a  start  at  farming  or  not.' 

''Ans.  'Those  other  men — some  of  them — took  claims  and  I  took 
a  claim;  it  is  hard  to  toll  what  my  object  was  when  I  took  a  claim.' 

"Int.  8.  'Of  the  company  of  men  first  settling  on  the  Tualitin 
plains  who  were  furnished  with  seed  grain,  so  far  as  you  know?' 

"Ans.     'Mr.  Doty,  Mr.  Walker  and  Mr.  Newell.' 

"Int.  0.  'Were  they  more  respectable  or  more  worthy  of  credit 
than  those  who  were  refused?' 

''Ans.    'I  presume  the  company  thought  so.' 

"Int.  10.    'State  what  you  think  about  it.' 

"Ans.  'So  far  as  I  myself  was  concerned,  I  thought  I  was  as 
worthy  as  any  man  that  lived ;  the  other  men  were  very  worthy  men, 
as  I  thought,' 

"Int.  11.  'Who  were  furnished  with  cattle  by  the  company,  and 
as  far  as  you  know?' 

"Ans.  ':Mr.  Walker,  Mr.  Doty,  Mr.  Griffin,  Mr.  Williams  and 
Mr.  Kelsey.' 

"Int.  12.    'Wove  the  cattle  sold  or  sim])ly  loaned?' 

"Ans.    'I  think  they  were  loaned.' 

"Int.  13.  'Was  it  not  generally  understood  among  the  Ameri- 
can trappers  that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  got  a  very  large  quantity 
of  .Tedodiah  Smith's  furs,  for  which  he  and  they  failed  to  account 
to  the  company  to  which  they  belonged?' 

"Ans.  'It  used  to  be  said  so  amongst  the  trappers  in  the  moun- 
tains.' 

''Int.  14.  'If  you  remember,  state  the  quantity  which  was  thus 
reported.' 

"Ans.    'It  was  always  reported  as  about  forty  packs.' 

"Int.  15.  'Give  an  estimate  of  the  value  of  forty  packs  of  beaver 
at  that  time.' 

"Ans.  'Forty  packs  of  beaver  at  that  time  in  the  mountains 
was  worth  about  |20,000 ;  I  don't  know  what  they  would  be  worth 
at  Vancouver.' 

"Int.  10.  'State  whether  the  dispute  about  this  matter  was  the 
cause  of  the  dissolution  of  the  firm  of  Smith,  Jackson  &  Sublette, 
to  which  you  refer  in  your  cross-examination.' 

"Ans.  'I  do  not  know;  that  was  the  report  among  mountain 
men.' 

"Cross-examination  resumed : 

"Int.  1.     'What  character  did  Jedediah  Smith  bear?' 

"Ans.  'He  bore  a  very  high  reputation  for  truth  and  veracity 
and  a  gentleman.' 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  409 

"Int.  2.  'From  what  you  know  of  his  reputation  do  you  believe 
he  was  capable  of  conspiring  with  Dr.  McLoughlin  to  defraud  his 
partners  ?' 

''Ans.  'I  think  he  was  a  man  of  too  great  a  reputation  to  be 
guilty  of  any  act  of  the  kind.' 

"Int.  3.  'How  long  did  you  know  Dr.  John  McLoughlin,  and 
what  was  his  reputation  for  truth  and  honesty  during  that  time?' 

"Ans.  'I  got  acquainted  with  John  McLoughlin  in  the  winter  of 
1840 ;  I  knew  him  from  that  time  until  he  died ;  he  was  a  high-toned 
gentleman ;  for  truth  and  veracity  he  could  not  be  beat.' 

"Int.  4.  'From  what  you  know  of  the  character  and  honesty  of 
Dr.  McLoughlin,  do  you  believe  he  was  capable  of  conspiring  with 
Jedediah  Smith  for  the  purpose  of  defrauding  his  (Smith's)  part- 
ners, or  to  make  money  for  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.?' 

"Ans.  'I  have  no  idea  that  the  doctor  was  ever  capable  of  any 
such  business.' 

"Int.  9.  'When  you  and  others  were  refused  wheat  by  Dr.  Mc- 
Loughlin, did  he  not  say  that  he  was  willing  to  furnish  it  to  any 
who  were  farmers,  but  unwilling  to  sell  it  for  other  purposes?' 

"Ans.  'I  think  he  did;  I  think  he  said  he  was  willing  to  furnish 
it  for  seed  to  farmers.' 

"Int.  10.    'At  that  time  had  you  done  any  farming  in  Oregon?' 

"Ans.     'None.' 

"Int.  11.  'Did  you  not  afterward  obtain  at  Vancouver  such 
things  as  you  wanted  to  carry  on  your  farm?' 

"Ans.     'Yes,  sir.' 

"Int.  12.  'Do  you  not  know  that  many  of  the  settlers  who 
borrowed  cattle  from  the  company  never  returned  them  or  paid  the 
company  for  them?' 

"Ans.  'I  know  some  men  borrowed  cattle  there  and  never  re- 
turned them.' 

"Int.  13.  'Were  not  some  of  these  the  persons  mentioned  by 
you  in  your  previous  testimony?' 

"Ans.  'Yes,  sir;  Mr.  Williams  was  one  that  I  know  of;  Mr. 
Griffin  never  returned  his,  I  think.'  " 

It  should  be  said  with  regard  to  all  the  testimony  in  these  cases 
that  a  very  great  amount  of  latitude  was  allowed  and  much  hear- 
say and  other  testimony  admitted  that  would  have  been  excluded 
under  the  strict  application  of  the  rules  of  evidence,  presumably 
because  it  was  not  to  go  before  an  ordinary  jury,  but  before  com- 
missioners who  were  all  able  lawyers,  and  who  were  to  have  ample 
time  to  sit  down  and  read,  and  study,  and  sift  the  evidence  thor- 
oughly. 

Meek,  it  will  be  remembered,  was  one  of  the  party  who,  in  1840, 
outfitted  at  Fort  Hall  and  drove  through  to  Walla  Walla  the  first 


410  ACQUIf^ITWX    OF    OREGON 

three  wagons  that  ever  went  through  to  the  Columbia  (Cf.  pp.  84- 
88,  ante). 

The  next  witness  in  order  of  time  of  arrival  in  Oregon  was  W. 
H.  Gray,  and  in  Chapter  III.  of  Book  II.,  infra,  so  much  of  his  testi- 
mony is  quoted  as  bears  directly  on  the  question  of  Whitman's  ride 
and  ;Mr.  Gray's  qualifications  for  writing  history  and  his  utter  in- 
difference to  accuracy,  even  on  so  easily  ascertained  a  point  as 
whether  Millard  Fillmore  or  John  Tyler  was  President  of  the 
United  States  in  the  spring  of  1843. 

Such  other  part  of  his  testimony  as  concerns  the  relation  of  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  the  occupation  of  Oregon  by  American  mis- 
sionaries and  settlers  was  as  follows: 

**Int.  3.  *In  what  capacity  and  for  what  purpose  did  you  first 
cross  the  Rocky  Mountains?' 

"Ans.  'I  came  in  the  capacity  of  secular  agent,  mechanic  and 
teacher  to  the  mission  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.,  then  about  being  estab- 
lished in  the  country,  in  connection  with  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding  and 
Dr.  ^larcus  Whitman  and  their  wives.'  " 

In  Chapter  IV,  of  Book  II.,  infra,  the  total  falsity  of  this  claim 
of  Gray  to  having  been  "Secular  Agent"  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  Mis- 
sion is  demonstrated  by  quoting  from  the  Missionary  Herald  during 
the  existence  of  the  mission  its  statements  of  his  real  position : 

"Int.  5.  'When  you  first  came  to  the  country,  and  in  the  imme- 
diately following  years,  what  was  the  policy  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  with  reference  to  the  general  settlement  of  Oregon  by  Ameri- 
cans?   State  any  facts  in  your  knowledge  pertinent  to  this  object.' 

"Ans.  The  policy  of  the  company,  as  made  known  to  me  by 
John  McLeod,  Thomas  McKay,  P.  C.  Pambrun,  John  McLoughlin, 
James  Douglas,  Francis  Ermatinger,  and,  I  think,  Mr.  Simpson, 
was  to  discourage  and  dissuade  all  American  settlement  in  the 
country;  this  policy  was  made  known  to  me  first  at  the  rendezvous 
on  Green  River  by  McLeod  and  McKay;  afterward  by  Mr.  Pam- 
brun, Ermatinger,  Dr.  McLoughlin  and  Mr.  Douglas;  first,  in  re- 
fusing to  allow  our  mission  to  engage  men  such  as  was  deemed 
necessary  to  assist  in  erecting  the  mission  establishments;  after- 
ward, by  Dr.  McLoughlin  and  Mr.  Douglas,  in  declining  to  allow 
the  mission  to  bring  men  or  laborers  from  the  Sandwich  Islands  in 
their  shij)S,  which  was  a  prominent  reason  for  my  being  sent  back 
to  the  States  to  bring  a  reinforcement  to  the  mission  across  the 
mountains.  In  the  mountains  I  obtained  the  consent  of  Mr.  Erma- 
tinger to  bring  a  carpenter  and  blacksmith,  under  a  contract  drawn 
by  him,  for  the  services  of  the  mission,  upon  conditions  that  those 
men  were  to  receive  only  the  wages  given  to  the  servants  of  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  not  to  trade  any  goods  they  might  receive 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  411 

for  their  pay  for  services  to  the  Indians  for  furs  or  interfere  with 
the  company's  trade  in  any  manner.'  " 

As  to  the  total  falsity  of  all  this  about  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
opposing  Americans  settling  in  Oregon  the  evidence  in  this  chapter 
is  conclusive. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  of  all  the  officers  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  with  whom  he  claims  to  have  had  these  conversations  James 
Douglas  was  the  only  one  then  living,  and  that  he  testified  that  the 
policy  of  the  company  was  directly  opposite  to  what  Mr.  Gray  stated 
it  to  have  been  on  his  alleged  recollections,  wholly  unsupported  by 
a  word  of  contemporaneous  letters  or  diaries,  about  conversations 
from  seventeen  to  thirty  years  before. 

''Int.  41.  'Have  you  ever  had  any  conversation  with  the  late  Dr. 
John  McLoughlin  about  supplies  and  assistance  furnished  the  early 
settlers  of  the  country  and  his  consequent  treatment  by  his  supe- 
riors?   If  so,  state  when  and  what  it  was.' 

"Ans.  'I  have,  both  as  regards  the  missionaries  and  settlers.  In 
the  winter  of  1836  and  1837  Dr.  McLoughlin  explained  to  me  fully 
the  position  in  which  he  stood  to  the  company  and  the  difficulty  he 
would  necessarily  get  into  by  furnishing  supplies  to  missionaries  or 
settlers^  and  advised  me,  as  I  was  about  returning  to  the  States,  to 
advise  our  board  in  reference  to  sending  on  supplies  to  the  mis- 
sions— to  our  mission  particularly  referred  to.  He  also  said  that 
he  was  fearful  that  there  would  be  complaints  and  difficulties  grow- 
ing out  of  the  supplies  he  had  already  furnished  to  the  Methodist 
missions ;  that  whatever  supplies  we  received  from  the  company  we 
must  consider  them  as  an  especial  favor.  Afterward,  in  1845  and 
1846,  perhaps,  when  I  was  building  a  house  for  the  doctor  in  Oregon 
City,  he  told  me  that  he  had  a  falling  out  with  the  company  in  con- 
sequence of  furnishing  those  supplies,  and  that  he  had  left  their 
service;  he  said  that  they  held  him  personally  responsible  for  the 
amount  of  the  advances  made  to  the  Protestant  missionaries  and 
settlers.' 

"Cross-examination : 

"Int.  1.  'When  did  you  have  the  last  conversation  with  Dr.  Mc- 
Loughlin ?' 

"Ans.     'In  the  fall  of  1847;  I  spent  some  two  weeks  of  that 
year  in  Oregon  City.' 

''Int.  2.  'Did  he  say  that  the  company  had  charged  him  for  the 
supplies  advanced  to  settlers  or  that  he  feared  they  would  charge 
him?' 

"Ans.  'My  impression  is  that  he  said  they  had  charged  him, 
and  that  he  had  to  pay  it.' 


412  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

''Int.  3.  'Tn  liis  conversation  in  the  winter  of  1S30  and  1837 
did  not  Dr.  McLouglilin  lell  you  that  he  was  instructed  by  the  com- 
pany to  do  no  credit  business?' 

"Ans.  'Not  at  all;  the  sui)plies  furnished  to  the  mission  were 
not  upon  credit,  but  drafts  drawn  upon  the  board,  payable  in  Lon- 
don.' 

"Int.  4.    'Did  he  ever  refuse  supplies  to  Dr.  Whitman's  mission?' 

"Ans.    'I  do  not  think  he  did,  to  a  limited  extent.' 

"Int.  5.    'Did  lie  ever  refuse  anything  desired  by  Dr.  Whitman?' 

"Ans.  'To  a  certain  extent  he  did  refuse;  that  is,  the  supplies 
were  limited  to  what  the  company  or  he  thought  was  sufficient  for 
our  immediate  wants.' 

"Int.  ().  'Do  you  mean  to  swear  that  Dr.  McLoughlin  ever  re- 
fused Dr.  Whitman  any  favor  for  which  he  asked?' 

"Ans.  'I  mean  to  say  that  there  was  scarcely  a  single  invoice 
or  bill  calling  for  supplies  for  the  mission  that  was  sent  to  Van- 
couver and  filled ;  I  know  the  first  invoice  made  out  was  not  filled.' 

''Int.  7.     'In  what  respect?' 

"Ans.    'In  respect  to  goods  and  tools.' 

"Int.  8.  'Did  the  company  have  the  tools  and  goods  that  were 
sent  for  to  spare  and  dis])ose  of?' 

"Ans.  'The  company  had  the  most  of  the  goods  that  we  w^anted ; 
they  stated  that  they  could  not  spare  them  from  the  Indian  trade. 
Tools  they  only  had  a  limited  supply,  and  advised  me  to  make  out 
my  bills  and  forward  thorn  to  London  and  they  would  be  tilled.' 

"Int.  9.  'Who  of  the  company  refused  to  allow  you  to  engage 
such  men  as  you  wanted  to  erect  buildings?' 

"Ans.  'Mr.  McLeod  in  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  Dr.  McLough- 
lin objected  to  it  in  \'ancouver.' 

"Int.  10.    '^^'hat  reason  did  they  give?' 

"Ans.  'The  reason  assigned  was  that  those  men  would  be  trad- 
ing and  interfering  with  Indians  about  the  stations.' 

"Int.  11.  'Was  not  the  reason  given  that  they  had  not  the  men 
to  spare?' 

"Ans.  'The  reason  assigned  in  the  Kocky  Mountains  by  McLeod 
was  that  they  i)referred  to  sui>i)ly  the  men  necessary  rather  than 
to  allow  the  Americans  to  be  brought  from  the  mountains.  Dr.  Mc- 
Loughlin had  not  the  men  to  spare.' 

"Int.  12.    'How  many  men  did  you  bring  with  you  the  first  trip?' 

"Ans.  'We  brought  but  two  men  to  Fort  Hall;  one  left  at  Fort 
Hall.' 

"Int.  14.  'Did  not  Dr.  McLoughlin,  when  he  declined  to  allow 
the  mission  to  bring  men  from  the  islands,  say  that  his  vessels  could 
not  bring  the  men  the  company  needed?' 

"Ans.    'I  think  not' 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  413 

"Int.  15.    'What  reason  did  he  give?' 

"Ans.  'The  principal  reason  was  the  liabilities  of  those  men  to 
interfere  with  the  mission  labors  and  cause  difficulty  with  the  In- 
dians.' 

"Int.  16.  'Do  you  not  know  that  the  company  was  required  to 
give  bonds  to  the  Hawaiian  Government  for  the  safe  return  of  the 
islanders  brought  from  Honolulu,  and  were  therefore  compelled  to 
keep  them  under  their  supervision?' 

"Ans.  'I  think  they  were  not  in  1836  and  1837  and  perhaps 
1838,  but  after  that  I  think  they  were.' 

"Int.  24.  'What  did  the  improvements  made  by  you  that  year 
cost?' 

"Ans.  'They  cost  the  American  Board  about  |500 ;  the  mill  ma- 
chinery was  sent  out  by  the  board,  and  was  extra.' 

"Int.  25.  'Do  you  know  the  amount  of  damages  claimed  by  the 
American  Board  of  the  Government  for  the  destruction  of  that 
property  ?' 

"Ans.  'I  do  not  know;  I  have  understood  that  it  was  either 
three  or  nine  thousand  dollars,  including  cattle  and  everything.' 

"Int.  47.  'Have  you  not  been  conscious  of  an  unfriendly  feeling 
toward  the  company  and  its  agents  ever  since  their  refusal  to  em- 
ploy you  and  your  wife?'  (/.  e.^  in  1839). 

"Ans.  'Not  on  account  of  that  transaction  or  refusal  to  employ 
us.' 

"Int.  48.  'Do  you  mean  to  say  that  you  and  your  wife  and  Dr. 
and  Mrs.  Whitman  did  not  make  frequent  and  prolonged  visits  to 
Walla  Walla  and  Fort  Vancouver?' 

"Ans.  'I  mean  to  say  that  me  and  my  wife  never  visited  Vancou- 
ver but  once ;  we  were  compelled,  in  consequence  of  a  misunderstand- 
ing between  Mr.  Spalding  and  ourselves,  to  remain  at  Walla  Walla 
(or  rather  my  wife  was)  during  the  winter  of  1839  and  1840  some 
two  or  three  weeks,  awaiting  my  return  from  Vancouver.  On  my 
return  we  went  directly  to  Dr.  Whitman's  station ;  we  seldom  vis- 
ited the  fort  afterward ;  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Whitman  made  frequent  calls 
upon  Mr.  Pambrun's  family  and  occasionally  visited  Fort  Van- 
couver. Between  some  of  the  gentlemen  of  the  company.  Dr.  Whit- 
man and  family,  myself  and  family,  there  was  always  a  cordial  and 
agreeable  association  and  acquaintance,  and  we  always  felt  that  it 
was  private  and  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  aifairs  of  the  company.' 

"Int.  49.  'Was  the  company  on  this  coast  known  or  represented 
except  by  its  agents  at  its  posts?' 

"Ans.  'There  was  always  in  our  intercourse  with  the  gentlemen 
of  the  company  a  distinction  kept  up  by  themselves  as  to  the  man- 
ner in  which  we  should  regard  them  in  our  private  business  or  social 


414  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

relations  and  in  their  actions  and  business  relations  as  connected 
with  the  company.' 

"Int.  50.  'Did  you  know  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  except  by  its 
representatives  at  its  posts?' 

"Ans.  'We  always  understood  there  was  a  double  action,  so  far 
as  related  to  the  gentlemen  of  the  comj)any  and  the  company  itself; 
the  question  might  be  answered — we  did.' 

"Int.  51.  'Do  you  mean  to  say  that  the  agents  of  the  company 
acted  differently  as  private  individuals  and  as  agents?' 

''Ans.    'I  mean  to  say  they  acted  in  a  double  capacity.' 

"Int.  52.    'In  what  capacity  did  you  act?' 

"Ans.  'I  acted  as  secular  agent  to  the  mission  of  the  A.  B.  C. 
F.  M.' 

"Int.  58.  'Was  it  not  of  great  advantage  to  the  mission  to  have 
the  post  at  Walla  Walla  in  their  neighborhood  and  to  find  the  In- 
dians there  partially  reclaimed  from  the  habits  of  their  savage  life?* 

"Ans.  'When  that  post  was  under  the  supervision  and  direction 
of  Mr.  Pambrun  and  Mr.  McKinlay  it  was  a  great  advantage  to  both 
the  mission  and  fort ;  as  soon  as  it  passed  into  the  hands  of  Mr.  Mc- 
Bean  it  became  the  immediate  cause,  with  other  influences  in  that 
section,  of  the  destruction  of  the  mission.' 

"Int.  59.    'When  did  Mr.  McBean  take  charge?' 

"Ans.    'I  am  unable  to  say ;  it  w^as  after  1842.' 

"Int.  60.    'When  did  you  leave  Dr.  Whitman's?' 

"Ans.    'In  the  fall  of  1842.' 

"Int.  61.  'Do  you  not  know  that  Mr.  McKinlay  continued  there 
until  1846?' 

"Ans.  'I  do  not;  I  saw  him  in  Oregon  City  before  1846;  I  am 
almost  positive  it  was  in  1845,  residing  there.' 

"Int.  62.  'Were  you  at  Whitman's  or  at  Walla  Walla  between 
1842  and  1848?' 

"Ans.    'I  think  not.' 

"Int.  63.  'In  saying  that  McBean's  occupation  of  the  fort  re- 
sulted in  part  as  just  stated  by  you,  do  you  pretend  to  know  any- 
thing about  it  or  is  your  opinion  based  upon  rumors?' 

"Ans.  'My  knowledge  and  opinions  are  based  upon  the  testimony 
which  has  been  given  and  published  in  relation  to  the  destruction 
of  that  mission  and  the  particular  accounts  which  I  have  received 
from  the  Indians  in  that  section  of  the  country  since  1861,  which 
I  believe  to  be  substantially  correct.' 

"Int.  64.  'Are  you  as  certain  in  regard  to  that  statement  as. 
you  were  that  Fillmore  was  President  in  the  winter  of  1842  and 
1843?' 

"Ans.  'I  am  considerably  more  certain  than  of  that,  as  I  have 
more  thoroughly  studied  the  subject.' 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  415 

"Int.  65.  'Do  you  not  know  that  Indians  often  fabricate  stories 
to  suit  their  own  purposes?' 

"Ans.  'That  depends  altogether  upon  the  object  to  be  accom- 
plished.' 

"Int.  70.  'How  much  did  it  cost  to  bring  Dr.  Whitman's  party 
from  the  States,  to  send  you  home  and  bring  you  out  again  with 
men  and  to  purchase  supplies  at  Vancouver  before  your  mission 
was  built?' 

"Ans.    'I  am  not  able  to  say.' 

"Int.  71.  'Could  you  have  built  the  mission,  supplied  and  pro- 
tected yourselves,  but  for  the  aid  furnished  by  the  company  and 
the  fact  that  the  company  had  establishments  in  the  vicinity  con- 
venient for  your  assistance?' 

"Ans.  'We  came  to  the  country  without  any  particular  knowl- 
edge of  and  entirely  independent  of  the  company  and  expected  to 
establish  our  mission  without  any  assistance  from  them.  At  the 
American  rendezvous  we  learned  from  Captain  Wyeth,  McLeod  and 
Mr.  McKay  that  we  could  get  supplies  of  the  Methodist  Mission  and 
also  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  and  in  consequence  of  this  informa- 
tion we  sold  and  threw  away  a  large  amount  of  supplies  that  we 
were  not  able  to  get  replaced  at  Vancouver;  so  far  as  the  protec- 
tion of  the  company  afforded,  my  impression  is  and  always  has  been 
that  the  mission  of  the  Board  and  of  the  Methodists  would  have 
been  far  more  successful  had  there  been  no  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in 
the  country.' 

"Int.  72.  'Have  you  not  made  on  several  occasions  statements 
different  from  this  contained  in  your  last  answer?' 

"Ans.  'I  have  repeatedly  said  that  the  company's  establish- 
ments being  in  the  country  was  a  great  convenience  both  to  the 
missions  and  the  settler,  but  never  admitted,  to  my  knowledge, 
their  being  necessary.' 

"Int.  165.  'Have  you  not  during  the  last  year  been  very  busy 
in  making  charges  against  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  some  of  its 
oflflcers  on  account  of  matters  occurring  within  the  last  twenty- 
five  years?' 

"Ans.  'For  something  over  a  year  I  have  been  collecting  up 
facts,  incidents  and  statements  and  all  the  histories  I  could  get 
hold  of,  for  the  purpose  of  giving  an  accurate  and  truthful  history 
of  the  early  settlement  of  the  country.  In  those  facts,  incidents 
and  statements  I  have  given  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  all  the  mis- 
sions and  all  the  individual  persons  that  I  have  spoken  or  writ- 
ten about  as  near  the  truth  as  I  have  been  able  to  collect,  and  have 
also  requested  of  all  persons  knowing  any  fact  stated  that  was  not 
strictly  true  to  forward  the  correction  and  it  should  have  its  weight 
in  the  historical  sketches  being  given.' 


410  ACQULSITIOX    OF    OREGON 

"lut.  10(1.  "Have  voii  not  (luriiij;  the  last  year  made  iiuiuy  and 
grievous  charges  in  print  against  the  company?' 

''Ans.  'I  do  not  think  I  have  made  a  single  charge  but  what 
is  strictly  true  from  the  best  knowledge  and  information  I  could 
get.' 

''Int.  107.  'Will  you  not  answer  the  last  question,  already  asked 
twice,  without  further  evasion  or  equivocation?' 

"Ans.  'I  do  not  think  I  have  evaded  or  equivocated  in  the  least, 
but  have  given  what  I  conceive  to  be  a  plain,  distinct  and  i)Ositive 
answer  to  the  question  put.' 

''Int.  108.  'Do  you  consider  yourself  capable  of  writing  an  im- 
partial and  unprejudiced  history  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  Ore- 
gon ?' 

"Ans.     'That  is  for  those  who  read  the  history  to  judge.' 

"Int.  109.  'The  question  is  with  reference  to  your  own  judg- 
ment; will  you  answer  it?' 

"Ans.  'I  cannot  say;  I  have  not  undertaken  to  write  a  history 
of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  but  of  all  events  and  general  transactions 
that  have  occurred  within  the  country  during  the  time  I  have  been 
in  it,  and  particularly  of  events  occurring  up  to  the  formation  of 
the  country  into  a  Territory  of  the  United  States.' 

"Int.  170.  'Is  your  feeling  such  toward  the  company  that  you 
believe  yourself  cai)able  of  acting  toward  it  and  its  officers  impar- 
tially and  without  })rejudice?' 

"Ans.  'I  don't  think  feelings  or  prejudices  have  anything  to  do 
Willi  it,  but  facts  are  all  I  seek  to  know.'" 

(iray's  History  of  Oregon  (p.  18.3)  says:  "The  difficulty  about 
land  had  no  existence  in  the  minds  or  thoughts  of  the  Indians  till 
the  fall  of  1839  and  after  the  renewal  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s 
license  for  twenty-one  years.  From  that  time  forward  a  marked 
change  was  manifest  in  the  feelings  of  most  of  the  gentlemen  of  the 
company," 

It  is  a  very  curious  coincidence  that  that  was  the  precise  time 
when  Gray  first  prepared  to  desert  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  Mission  and 
ai)plied  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  for  a  position  for  his  wife  as 
teacher  at  Vancouver  and  for  himself  in  some  capacity  (presum- 
ably as  carpenter)  and  was  refused  employment,  and  of  this  Rev. 
C.  Eells,  in  a  letter  dated  October  .3,  1842  (the  day  Whitman  started 
to  the  States  without  wailing  lor  it  as  he  had  agreed  to  do),  wrote 
as  follows:  "Mr.  Cornelius  Rogers  has  said  James  Douglas,  Esq., 
told  him  they  would  not  give  Mr.  Gray  a  hearing  because  of  the 
want  of  evidence  that  the  mission  approved  of  such  an  arrange- 
ment being  made." 

While  Mr.  Gray  thus  discovered  a  change  in  18.39  ''in  the  feel- 
ings of  most  of  the  gentlemen  of  the  comi)any"  the  letters  herein- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  417 

before  quoted  from  all  those  who  remained  faithful  to  the  mission 
— Dr.  and  Mrs.  Whitman,  Rev.  H.  H.  Spalding,  Rev.  C.  Eells  and 
Rev.  Elkanah  Walker,  show  that  no  one  of  them  discovered  any 
such  change,  but  they  all  remained  on  the  friendliest  terms  with 
the  company  during  the  whole  existence  of  the  mission,  i.  e.,  eight 
years  after  this  time  when  Gray  saw  this  change  and  more  than 
five  years  after  he  deserted  his  associates  in  September,  1842,  in  a 
manner  which  Eells  and  Walker  bitterly  denounced  as  dishonor- 
able, in  the  before-mentioned  letter  of  C.  Eells,  dated  October  3, 
1842  (which  letter  Walker  indorsed  as  correct,  especially  in  its 
severe  censure  of  Gray's  course  in  deserting  the  mission).  The 
reader  will  do  well  to  turn  to  p.  54,  ante,  and  read  Gray's  letter  of 
January  10,  1838,  to  the  Secretary  of  the  American  Board  and  com- 
pare what  he  then  wrote  about  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  with  this  "tes- 
timony" twenty-eight  years  later. 

Surely  it  is  evident  to  every  one  who  reads  this  testimony  and 
compares  it  with  the  contemporaneous  letters  and  diaries  herein 
quoted  that  Gray's  testimony  on  any  matter  connected  with  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  is  totally  unworthy  of  any  credence. 

Caleb  Cus'hing  evidently  thought  so,  for  when  the  counsel  for 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  the  Puget's  Sound  Agricultural  Co.  in 
their  arguments  had  denounced  Gray  in  the  bitterest  possible  lan- 
guage, Cushing  in  his  argument,  though  defending  with  great  vigor 
the  other  witnesses  whom  they  had  attacked  as  being  untrust- 
worthy, did  not  offer  one  word  in  support  of  Gray's  attacks  upon 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  nor  defend  his  veracity  in  any  way. 

The  next  witness  is  Hon.  A.  L.  Lovejoy  who,  with  Hastings, 
came  with  White's  migration  in  1842  and  was  Whitman's  com- 
panion on  his  ride  to  the  States  as  far  as  Bent's  Fort  (near  where 
La  Junta,  Colo.,  now  is),  where  he  remained  through  the  winter 
and  early  spring  and  joined  the  1843  migration  near  Fort  Laramie 
in  July.  He  was  a  prominent  citizen  of  Oregon  all  the  rest  of  his 
life,  several  times  member  of  the  Territorial  Legislature,  Speaker 
of  the  House,  President  of  the  Council,  member  of  the  convention 
which  formed  the  State  Constitution,  Receiver  of  the  Land  Office, 
etc. 

His  testimony  is  found  in  Idem,  pp.  17-20,  and  the  following 
are  extracts  from  the  same: 

"Int.  4.  'Please  state  whether  you  were  acquainted  with  Dr. 
John  McLoughlin,  Peter  S.  Ogden,  James  Douglas  and  other  fac- 
tors and  managing  agents  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  during  your 
early  residence  in  Oregon.' 

"Ans.  'I  was  well  acquainted  with  Dr.  McLoughlin,  Mr.  Ogden 
and  Mr,  Douglas,  more  particularly  with  Dr.  McLoughlin.  I  was 
acquainted  with  some  others.' 


418  ACQUISITIOX    OF    OREGON 

"Int.  5.  'What  counection,  if  any,  did  these  men  and  their  em- 
ployes and  servants,  and  those  under  their  influence,  have  with  the 
fornijition  of  tlie  jtrovisional  oovernnient  of  Oregon?' 

"Ans.  'I  always  understood  that  they  participated  in  common 
with  other  citizens  of  the  valley.  Dr.  Tolmie  was  a  member  of  the 
Lejijislature  in  1840;  H.  M.  Pierce  was  a  member;  A.  McDonald  was 
a  ineiiiber  in  1840.    They  generally  voted  at  the  elections.' 

"Int.  G.  'State  what,  if  anything,  you  have  heard  Dr.  John  Mc- 
Loughlin  say  with  reference  to  his  supplying  emigrants  at  an  early 
day  with  food  and  clothing  and  seed  for  their  farms,  and  the  action 
of  his  superiors  with  reference  thereto?' 

"Ans.  'At  an  early  day.  Dr.  McLoughlin  furnished  the  emi- 
gi-ants  coming,  a  great  many  of  them  very  destitute,  with  fuel  and 
clothing,  seed  grain  and  cattle,  and  they  were  to  pay  him  when  they 
could ;  it  was  a  large  amount,  some  seventy-five  or  eighty  thousand 
dollars,  at  least  I  so  understood  from  him.  I  understood  him  to 
say  that  he  had  acted  against  orders,  that  he  had  done  it  on  his 
own  responsibility;  that  they  complained  that  he  had  done  it 
against  orders,  and  that  he  sold  goods  on  credit  without  authority, 
and  that  they  did  not  do  a  credit  business.  He  said  further  that 
they  proposed  to  charge  him  with  this  amount;  he  then  said  that 
he  claimed  that  if  they  charged  him  with  this  amount  that  he 
claimed  the  profits  that  grew  out  of  it;  that  is  the  way  he  expected 
to  get  even  on  it.  I  never  knew  what  the  company  did  in  the 
premises.' 

''Int.  7.  'State  whether  Dr.  McLoughlin  was  pleased  or  dis- 
pleased with  this  conduct  of  his  superiors  in  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.?' 

"Ans.  'I  should  infer  from  his  conversation  that  he  was  dis- 
pleased.' 

''Cross-examination : 

"Int.  1.  'In  the  conversation  with  Dr.  McLoughlin,  referred  to 
by  you  in  answer  to  the  sixth  direct  interrogatory,  did  he  not  say 
that  he  feared  or  supposed  the  company  might  charge  him  for  giv- 
ing credit,  rather  than  that  its  oflScers  had  proposed  to  do  so?' 

"Ans.  'I  don't  know  that  they  had  done  it.  The  impression  I 
had  is  that  they  had  threatened  to  do  it,  and  he  expected  that  they 
would ;  I  don't  know  that  they  did  it.' 

"Int.  5.  'In  what  year  was  the  provisional  government  of  Ore- 
gon organized?' 

"Ans.  'The  first  steps  were  taken  in  1843;  in  1845  there  was  a 
kind  of  a  constitution  adopted.' 

"Int.  6.  'Was  not  the  object  of  that  government  the  mainte- 
nance of  law  and  order  and  the  adoption  of  measures  to  promote 
the  settlement  and  prosperity  of  Oregon?' 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  419 

"Ans.    'It  was.' 

''Int.  7.  'Did  not  the  gentlemen  you  have  named  in  your  direct 
examination  as  officers  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  co-operate  as 
heartily  in  the  organization  and  support  of  that  government  as 
other  citizens  of  Oregon?' 

"Ans.    'They  did,  and  helped  equally  to  bear  the  burdens.'  " 

This  deposition  was  signed  July  27,  1866,  eight  months  after 
Spalding  had  launched  the  Saving  Oregon  Theory  of  Whitman's 
ride  in  the  Pacific,  but  there  is  not  a  hint  in  all  his  testimony  that 
Love  joy  knew  anything  about  any  patriotic  purpose  in  that  ride, 
though  certainly  if  he  did  here  was  a  most  excellent  opportunity 
for  putting  that  matter  on  permanent  record  in  an  oflBcial  docu- 
ment of  great  weight,  and  where  it  would  have  much  helped  the 
United  States  to  have  shown  that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  1842 
were  striving  to  wrest  Oregon  from  the  United  States,  and  that 
Whitman  prevented  it  and  saved  Oregon. 

Similarly,  if  it  were  true  that  at  Fort  Hall  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.  put  impediments  in  the  way  of  migration  to  Oregon,  as  asserted 
by  all  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved  Oregon  Legend,  Lovejoy, 
as  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  first  large  migration  overland  (that  of 
1842,  which  started  under  Dr.  Elijah  White,  but  a  little  later  de- 
posed White  and  chose  Hastings  and  Lovejoy  as  leaders),  was  the 
best  possible  witness  to  show  it,  but  not  a  word  of  anything  of  that 
sort  is  in  his  testimony. 

Two  of  the  leaders  of  the  1843  migration  testified,  viz. :  Hon. 
J.  W.  Nesmith,  its  orderly  sergeant,  and  Hon.  Jesse  Applegate,  the 
captain  elected  for  one  of  the  two  companies  into  which  that  mi- 
gration divided,  when,  on  June  9,  1843,  Peter  H.  Burnett  was 
obliged  from  sickness  to  resign  the  captaincy  of  the  whole  party. 
Besides  these  J.  G.  Campbell,  S.  M.  Gilmore,  M.  M.  McCarver  and 
George  Summers  of  the  1843  migration  testified,  but  the  testimony 
of  Gilmore  and  Summers  did  not  in  any  way  touch  on  anything  per- 
tinent to  this  discussion  and  need  not  be  noticed. 

Nesmith's  testimony  was  taken  in  Washington,  D.  C,  May  15, 
1866,  and  is  found  in  Vol.  VI.,  pp.  23-50,  and  I  invite  attention  to 
such  parts  thereof  as  are  pertinent  to  this  chapter. 

"Int.  1.  'What  is  your  name,  age,  place  of  residence  and  pres- 
ent occupation?' 

"Ans.  'James  W.  Nesmith;  aged  forty-five  years;  residence,  Polk 
county,  Oregon ;  occupation  farmer,  and  at  present  United  States 
Senator.' 

"Int.  15.  'When  did  you  see  Fort  Hall,  and  what  was  its  con- 
dition when  you  saw  it?  Please  describe  the  same  as  particularly 
as  you  can,  the  character  and  condition  of  the  fort  and  the  build- 
ings, and  their  value,  if  you  feel  competent  to  state  it' 


420  AC(Ji'L^ITW.\    OF    OREUOX 

"A lis.  'T  never  saw  Fort  Hall  but  once.  I  stopped  there  four 
or  tivf  (lays  in  the  autumn  of  1843.  It  was  then  rather  a  rude 
structure,  built  of  adobe,  walled  in  with  adobe,  and  within  were 
some  rude  buildinp;s  of  the  same,  covered  with  poles  and  dirt,  the 
whole  very  rude  and  cheaj)ly  built.  There  was  no  lumber  there  of 
any  kind,  sawed  or  hewn.  They  could  have  been  built  by  the  rudest 
kind  of  labor;  no  skill  was  required  in  their  construction.  It  was 
a  mere  mixing  of  mud  to  make  adobes  and  piling  them  up.  At  rea- 
sonable i>ri('es  of  labor,  such  as  existed  in  the  country  at  the  time, 
I  should  think  Fort  Hall,  as  I  saw  it  in  1843,  could  have  been  built 
for  one  thousand  dollars.' 

''Int.  28.  'How  long  have  you  been  in  Oregon  and  how  long 
have  you  been  a  member  of  the  Ignited  States  Senate?' 

"Ans.  'I  went  to  Oregon  in  1843,  and  that  has  been  my  residence 
ever  since.  I  took  my  seat  in  the  United  States  Senate  the  4th  of 
March,  1861.' 

''Int.  32.  'Have  you  held  any  public  offices  or  positions  prior 
to  your  election  as  United  States  Senator?  If  so,  please  to  describe 
them.' 

''Ans.  'Yes,  I  have  held  several.  In  1845  I  was  a  judge  under 
the  provisional  government.  In  1846  and  1847  I  was  a  member  of 
the  Legislature.  In  1847  I  commanded  a  company  in  the  Indian 
war.  In  1853  I  was  appointed  United  States  Marshal  for  the  Ter- 
ritory of  Oregon.  In  same  year  I  commanded  a  company  in  Rogue 
River  war.  In  1854  I  was  brigadier  general  of  the  Oregon  mi- 
litia. In  1855  I  commanded  a  regiment  of  volunteers  in  the  Indian 
war.  In  1857  I  was  Superintendent  of  Indian  Affairs  for  Oregon 
and  Washington,  and  held  that  office  until  1859.  That  was  the 
last  office  I  held  until  I  came  to  the  United  States  Senate.' 

''Int.  33.  'You  have  stated  that  you  were  a  superintendent  of 
the  Indian  affairs.  Do  you  know  the  effect  of  the  trade  and  inter- 
course with  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  on  their  physical  and  social  con- 
dition?   If  yea,  please  to  describe  it  as  fully  as  you  can.' 

"Ans.  'So  far  as  the  intercourse  of  the  Hudson's  Baj'  Co.  with 
the  Indians  is  concerned,  I  think  their  policy  is  the  best  that  was 
ever  ado]»ted,  that  is  with  reference  to  the  wants  and  interest  of 
the  Indian.  They  operated  ni)on  his  interests  and  his  fears.  So  far 
as  I  know  they  administered  very  strict  justice.  They  had  a  tariff 
of  prices,  and  they  paid  one  Indian  the  same  as  they  paid  another 
for  whatever  he  had  to  dispose  of.  They  encouraged  sobriety  and 
good  conduct  among  the  Indians,  and  when  the  Indians  committed 
outrages  they  ])unishod  them.  Their  i)unishment  was  not  that  of  a 
great  military  expedition,  but  they  cut  off  their  trade  and  made 
the  Indian  feel  his  dependence  upon  them.  They  were  an  immense 
monopoly  and  kept  out  individual  enterprise  and  trade  from  the 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  421 

Indians.  While  they  held  that  power  they  compelled  the  Indians 
to  submit  to  their  own  terms.  In  the  absence  of  any  competition 
it  was  within  their  power  to  do  this.  They  punished  their  own  em- 
ployes for  infractions  against  the  rights  of  the  Indians,  and  so  far 
as  I  know  their  contact  with  the  Indians  did  not  tend  to  demoral- 
ize or  degrade  them.  The  inculcation  of  sobriety  and  temperance 
by  the  company  resulted  in  its  own  benefit,  that  is,  to  the  benefit  of 
the  company,  because  while  the  Indian  practiced  those  virtues  he 
had  more  to  sell,  and  therefore  increased  the  trade  of  the  com- 
pany. The  power  of  the  company  to  keep  out  private  or  foreign 
competition  gave  them  the  exclusive  control  of  the  Indians.  The 
Indians  looked  to  the  company  as  a  government  and  a  power.  Dur- 
ing their  occupancy  of  the  country  there  was  little  or  no  intrusion 
upon  the  Indian  lands.  The  Indians  retained  the  sites  of  their  vil- 
lages, fisheries  and  hunting  grounds ;  consequently  they  did  not 
diminish  in  numbers  as  they  did  after  the  country  was  thrown  open 
to  general  and  promiscuous  occupation.' 

"  ^\fter  the  power  of  the  company  to  control  the  intercourse 
between  the  Indians  and  the  whites  had  ceased,  I  should  say  about 
1846  or  1847,  the  Indians  began  gradually  to  diminish  by  reason  of 
their  promiscuous  contact  with  the  whites.  While  the  company  en- 
forced a  rigid  control  over  them,  I  do  not  know  of  their  having  done 
the  Indians  any  injustice.  The  presence  of  this  powerful  monopoly 
in  the  country  exercised  a  deleterious  infiuence  against  the  United 
States  in  controlling  the  Indians.  In  those  remote  regions  the  In- 
dians were  more  in  the  habit  of  recognizing  the  power  of  the  com- 
pany than  they  were  the  Government  of  the  United  States.  So  far 
as  my  knowledge  extends  to  their  social  condition,  I  don't  think 
their  efforts  extended  so  much  in  the  direction  of  civilizing  the 
Indian  as  it  did  in  keeping  him  in  a  position  where  the  greatest 
benefits  would  be  derived  in  a  trade  with  him  as  a  hunter  and  trap- 
per. A  great  many  of  the  employes,  and  some  of  the  officers  of  the 
company,  intermarried  with  the  Indian  women.  The  children,  the 
result  of  this  connection,  were  in  many  instances  educated  in  the 
schools  under  the  patronage  of  the  company.' 

"Int.  34.  'What  was  the  effect  of  the  policy  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.  on  the  development  and  settlement  of  the  country,  favor- 
able or  otherwise?' 

''Ans.  'I  think  the  policy  of  the  company  was  adverse  to  the 
settlement  of  the  country.  I  infer  this  from  remarks  made  by  the 
officers  of  the  company  to  myself  and  other  early  emigrants,  as  they 
invariably  underestimated  the  quality  of  the  soil  and  the  induce- 
ments for  settlement  and  advised  the  early  settlers  generally  to  go 
to  California.  This  probably  resulted  from  the  fact  that  the  set- 
tling of  the  country  must  invariably  destroy  their  trade  with  and 


422  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

their  control  over  the  Indian  tribes.  Upon  the  whole  I  think  that 
the  company  were  very  much  averse  to  the  occupation  of  the  coun- 
try by  American  citizens.' 

''Cross-examination : 

"Int.  32.  'Had  your  party  been  delayed  a  month  on  the  road 
could  they  have  i-eached  Fort  Vancouver  that  winter?' 

"Ans.    'I  think  they  could.    It  was  a  mild,  open  winter.' 

"Int.  39.  'What  was  the  labor  you  speak  of  at  Fort  Hall  in 
1843;  was  it  not  that  of  the  emigrants  who  had  crossed  with  you?' 

"Ans.  'Some  of  the  emigrants  who  went  with  me  hired  out  at 
Fort  Hall  to  go  out  with  trapping  parties.' 

"Int.  40.  'How  many  of  them,  and  for  how  long  a  time;  and 
did  they  remain  there  during  the  winter?' 

"Ans.  'There  were  two  or  three  of  them  who  hired  out;  I  don't 
know  how  long  they  remained.    I  tried  to  hire  out  myself.' 

"Int.  85.  'Did  you  in  1845,  at  Oregon  City,  sign  a  paper  con- 
taining this  language,  viz. : 

"  That  this  mixed  population  exists  in  the  midst  of  numerous 
and  warlike  tribes  of  Indians,  to  whom  the  smallest  dissensions 
among  the  white  inhabitants  would  be  the  signal  to  let  loose  upon 
their  defenseless  families  all  the  horrors  of  savage  warfare?' 

"Ans.  'In  1845  the  Legislature  was  in  session  in  Oregon  City. 
They  drew  up  a  memorial  to  the  Congress  of  the  United  States 
which  I,  among  others,  signed.  I  have  no  positive  recollection  of 
the  language,  but  I  think  it  did  contain  something  of  the  character 
contained  in  the  (juestion.  We  Avere  exceedingly  anxious  for  the 
United  States  to  extend  its  laws  and  jurisdiction  over  us.' 

"Int.  86.  'Did  this  paper  which  you  signed  contain  this  passage, 
now  read  to  you,  viz. : 

"  'Although  such  has  been  the  result  thus  far  of  our  temporary 
union  of  interests ;  though  we,  the  citizens  of  the  United  States,  have 
had  no  cause  to  complain  either  of  exactions  or  oppression  at  the 
hands  of  the  subjects  of  Great  Britain,  but  on  the  contrary,  it  is  but 
just  to  say  that  their  conduct  toward  us  has  been  most  friendly, 
liberal  and  ])hilanthropic,  yet  we  fear  a  long  continuance  of  the 
present  state  of  things  is  not  to  be  expected,  our  temporary  gov- 
ernment ])eing  limited  in  its  efficiency  and  crippled  in  its  powers 
by  the  ])aramount  duty  we  owe  to  our  respective  Governments,  our 
revenues  being  inadequate  to  its  support,  and  the  almost  total  ab- 
sence, apart  from  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  of  the  means  of  defense 
against  the  Indians,  who,  recent  occurrences  lead  us  to  fear,  enter- 
tain hostile  feelings  toward  the  people  of  the  Ignited  States?' 

"Ans.  'I  have  not  seen  that  memorial  since  I  signed  it.  I  think 
it  is  more  than  probable  that  it  contained  the  statements  in  ques- 
tion.    My  impression  is  that  it  did.' 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  423 

"Int.  87.  'Did  this  paper  which  you  signed  contain  this  passage, 
now  read  to  you,  viz. : 

"  'Your  memorialists  would  further  inform  your  honorable  body 
that,  while  the  subjects  of  Great  Britain,  through  the  agency  of  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  are  amply  provided  with  all  the  munitions  of 
war,  and  can  afford,  by  means  of  their  numerous  fortifications, 
ample  protection  for  themselves  and  their  property,  the  citizens  of 
the  United  States  are  scattered  over  a  wide  extent  of  territory, 
without  a  single  place  of  refuge,  and  within  themselves  almost  en- 
tirely destitute  of  every  means  of  defense?' 

"Ans.  'As  I  said  before,  I  have  not  seen  that  memorial  for 
twenty-one  years.  I  think  it  contained  language  similar  to  that 
which  you  quote.  We  were  endeavoring  to  make  a  strong  case  and 
get  protection.  I  recollect  the  memorial  and  the  person  who  drew 
it,  and  I  have  no  doubt  but  what  it  contained  substantially  what 
has  been  read.' " 

The  testimony  of  Hon.  Jesse  Applegate  is  in  Vol.  V.,  pp.  265- 
312,  and  as  will  be  seen  he  was  strongly  opposed  to  the  payment  of 
any  considerable  sum  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  Puget's  Sound 
Agricultural  Co.,  and  had  worked  industriously  against  the  pay- 
ment of  any  larger  sum  than  $50,000  (Cf.  Vol.  III.,  Memorial  and 
Argument,  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  vs.  United  States,  Closing  Argument 
for  Plaintiff,  p.  37). 

Remembering  his  strong  bias  against  the  claim,  nothing  is  more 
evident  than  that  if  he  had  witnessed  anything  in  1843  in  the  con- 
duct of  Capt.  Richard  Grant,  in  charge  of  Fort  Hall,  or  Payette  in 
charge  of  Fort  Boise,  or  McKinlay  in  charge  of  Fort  Walla  Walla, 
that  was  antagonistic  to  American  interests,  or  that  tended  to  de- 
ceive and  retard  the  progress  of  the  great  migration  of  which  he 
was  one  of  the  acknowledged  leaders,  or  if  he  had  known  anything 
of  Whitman's  having  done  anything  to  save  Oregon,  and  still  more 
if  he  had  believed  that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  had  instigated  the 
Whitman  massacre,  he  certainly  would  have  introduced  it  in  his 
forty-eight  pages  of  testimony. 

Nearly  all  his  testimony  is  a  series  of  estimates  of  the  value  of 
the  property  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  at  its  various  stations,  which 
of  course  does  not  concern  us  now,  but  I  invite  attention  to  the 
following : 

"Int.  1.     'State  your  age,  residence  and  occupation.' 

"Ans.  'Age  fifty-five  years;  Yoncalla,  Douglass  County,  Ore- 
gon ;  farmer ;  formerly  surveyor  and  civil  engineer.' 

"Int.  2.  'How  long  have  you  resided  in  Oregon,  and  at  what 
places?" 

"Ans.  'I  have  resided  twenty-three  years;  six  years  in  the  Wil- 
lamette Valley,  the  remainder  of  the  time  in  Umpqua  Valley.' 


424  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

''Cross-examination : 

"Int.  0.  'Was  not  the  post  at  riniMiua  a  convenience  to  the 
early  settlers,  and  do  j'ou  not  believe  that  the  influence  exerted 
upon  the  Indians  had  been  favorable  to  the  security  of  the  settlers?' 

"Ans.  'I  lliink  the  intlnence  exerted  over  the  Indians  was  every- 
where favorable  to  the  early  settlement  of  the  country,  and  some 
supplies  were  obtained  at  Fort  Umpqua.' 

"Int.  31.  'At  that  time  was  not  Fort  Walla  Walla  a  station  of 
great  importance  to  the  emigrants,  both  for  convenience  and  pro- 
tection?' 

"Ans.  *Mr.  McKinlay  had  but  few  supplies  in  the  fall  of  1843 
to  spare  to  emigrants.  Doubtless  the  fort,  as  a  general  place  for 
maintaining  peace  with  the  Indians,  afforded  protection  to  the  emi- 
grants passing  through.' 

"Int.  177.  'From  1843  to  1849  state  what,  in  your  judgment, 
was  the  influence  of  the  company  upon  the  settlement  of  the  coun- 
try and  the  pacification  of  savages,  and  the  protection  of  emigrants 
and  settlers.' 

"Ans.  'The  influence  of  the  company  was  in  all  respects  in- 
quired after  most  beneficial  and  salutary.' 

"Int.  178.  'Was  that  influence  in  any  respect  subsequently 
changed  up  to  the  time  of  the  company's  leaving  in  I860?' 

"Ans.    'Not  to  my  knowledge.' 

"Int.  179.  'Are  you  the  Jesse  Applegate  whose  name  appears 
subscribed  to  a  memorial  of  the  legislative  committee  of  Oregon, 
dated  June  28,  1845,  and  addressed  to  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States?' 

"Ans.    *I  am.' 

"Int.  180.     'Were  you  not  the  author  of  that  memorial?' 

"Ans.  'I  was  a  member  of  the  committee  that  reported  the  me- 
morial.' This  is  the  memorial  on  which  Gray  (Part  II.,  Chapter 
III.,  infra)  and  Xesmith  (pp.  419-422,  ante)  were  questioned. 

''Int.  181.  'Did  you  not  write  in  October,  1851,  a  letter  to  Dr. 
John   McLoughlin  containing  the  following  paragraph?: 

"  'As  one  of  the  early  emigrants  to  Oregon,  I  am  pleased  to  bear 
evidence  to  your  kindness  and  Christian  philanthropy;  of  those  re- 
quiring assistance  you  have  never  exacted  either  a  civil  or  religious 
test;  Catholics  and  Protestants,  Americans  and  British,  have  been 
equal  sharers  of  your  bounty,  and  are  equally  indebted  to  you  for 
]>rotection  and  assistance;  but  the  evidence  of  a  private  citizen  is 
unnecessary  to  establish  the  fact  of  the  active  and  beneficial  assist- 
ance you  have  ever  rendered  to  American  settlers  in  Oregon ;  the 
acknowledgment  of  this  fact  contained  in  a  memorial  transmitted 
to  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  in  1845  is  superior  to  all  pri- 
vate  testimonials;   that  document,  signed  by  every   officer  of  the 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  425 

provisional  government,  legislative  and  executive  and  judicial,  pays 
a  just  tribute  to  the  conduct  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  Oregon, 
which  up  to  that  time  was  under  your  superintendence.' 

"Ans.  'I  wrote  such  a  letter,  or  a  letter  to  that  purport;  I  do 
not  remember  the  date.' 

"Int.  182.  'Do  you  not  believe  that  in  the  absence  of  protection 
to  the  people  of  Oregon  on  the  part  of  the  American  Government 
up  to  the  4th  of  March,  1849,  the  assistance  and  support  of  the  in- 
fant settlement  furnished  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  was,  if  not 
essential,  of  great  importance  to  the  very  life  of  those  settlements?' 

"Ans.  'Their  concurrence  in  the  provisional  government  for  the 
purpose  of  keeping  peace  was,  in  my  opinion,  indispensable.' 

"Int.  220.  'Since  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  made  its  claim  against 
the  Government,  in  regard  to  which  you  have  been  testifying,  have 
you  not  written,  published  and  expressed  your  earnest  opposition 
thereto?' 

"Ans.     'I  have.' 

"Int.  221.  'Have  you  not  felt  from  that  time  to  the  present  a 
strong  and  earnest  bias  against  the  claim  and  have  done  all  in  your 
power  to  weaken  and  defeat  it?' 

"Ans.    'I  have.' 

"Direct  examination  resumed: 

"Int.  3.  'Would  the  bias  you  feel  against  the  company's  claim 
in  any  way  affect  your  judgment  of  the  value  of  any  particular 
piece  of  property  estimated  by  you,  whether  it  belonged  to  the  com- 
pany or  not?' 

"Ans.    'I  do  not  think  it  would ;  I  do  not  think  it  has.' 

"Int.  4.  'Does  your  opposition  to  the  payment  of  the  company's 
claim  go  to  the  entire  extent  or  only  so  much  as  you  believe  to  be 
unjust  under  the  treaties  upon  w^hich  it  is  based?' 

"Ans.    'So  much  only  as  I  deem  to  be  unjust.' 

"Cross-examination  resumed : 

"Int.  1.  'Do  you  suppose  that  your  judgment  is  more  free  from 
the  influence  of  strong  and  earnest  bias  than  is  that  of  other  men 
of  intelligence?' 

"Ans.  'I  do  not  feel  myself  more  competent  to  decide  upon  the 
question  of  my  ow^n  prejudice  than  a  lunatic  upon  his  own  sanity.' " 

Mr.  M.  M.  McCarver's  testimony  is  in  Idem,  pp.  33-40,  and  the 
following  is  all  that  concerns  this  discussion: 

"Int.  1.    'State  your  age,  residence  and  occupation.' 

"Ans.  'Am  fifty-eight  years  of  age ;  residence,  Portland,  Oregon ; 
occupation,  that  of  farmer,  trader  and  miner.' 

"Int.  2.  'When  did  you  come  to  Oregon,  and  where  have  you 
resided  since?' 


426  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

''Ans.  'I  came  to  Oregon  in  1843;  have  resided  near  Oregon 
City  and  Portland  most  of  the  time  since.' 

"Int.  3.  'What  offices  did  you  hold  under  the  provisional  gov- 
ernment?' 

^'Ans.  *I  was  a  member  of  the  Legislature  and  Speaker  of  the 
House  at  the  time  of  the  passage  of  the  organic  law  of  Oregon  in 
1844,  which  was  submitted  to  the  people  and  adopted  by  them.' 

"Int.  4.  'State  what  connection  the  officers  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
and  Puget's  Sound  Agricultural  Cos.  had  with  the  formation  of 
the  provisional  government,  and  whether  they  voted  generally  and 
"wielded  an  influence  for  or  against  the  organic  act  you  refer  to.' 

"Ans.  'Dr.  McLoughlin,  Douglas  and  others  of  the  principal 
officers  of  the  company  advised  and  assisted  in  the  formation  of 
tlie  government,  and  they  and  those  under  their  influence,  I  believe, 
generally  voted  for  the  organic  act.' 

"Int.  5.  'Who  of  their  officers  and  agents  served  as  members 
of  the  Legislature  or  held  other  public  positions  under  that  Govern- 
ment?' 

"Ans.  'Dr.  W.  F.  Tolmie  was  a  member  of  the  Legislature  from 
the  Puget's  Sound  district;  A.  L.  Lewis,  and  perhaps  others,  were 
members ;  Mr.  Frank  Ermatinger  was  Treasurer  of  the  Territory.' 

"Cross-examination : 

"Int.  0.  'Do  you  not  know  that  during  the  years  of  early  emi- 
gration to  Oregon  that  post  (/.  e.,  Fort  Boise — W.  I.  M.)  was  of 
great  value  as  a  means  of  protection  and  convenience  to  emigrants?' 

"Ans.     'Yes,  I  have  reason  to  believe  it.' 

"Int.  10.  'In  your  judgment  would  not  the  sufferings,  loss  of 
life  and  loss  of  property  have  been  much  greater  than  they  were 
if  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  had  had  no  posts  at  Fort  Boise  and  Fort 
Hall?' 

"Ans.  'Yes,  I  believe  it;  they  furnished  supplies  and  furnished 
horses  when  teams  gave  out.' 

"Int.  11.  'Was  there  not  an  influence  exerted  upon  the  Indians 
through  the  company  at  these  establishments  tending  to  save  emi- 
grants from  Indian  hostilities?' 

"Ans.    'I  have  every  reason  to  believe  it.' 

"Int.  21.  'Was  not  the  provisional  government  to  which  you 
have,  referred  organized  without  regard  to  national  allegiance,  for 
the  purposes  of  maintaining  law  and  order,  for  mutual  protection 
and  for  promoting  the  settlement  and  prosperity  of  Oregon?' 

"Ans.    'Yes,  that  was  the  understanding.' 

"Int.  22.  'Did  not  the  officers  of  the  company  co-operate  actively 
and  harmoniously  with  the  other  residents  of  Oregon  for  these 
ends?' 

"Ans.    'Yes,  sir.' 


ACQUISITION^    OF    OREGON  427 

"Int.  23.  'Did  not  the  furnishing  of  provisions,  clothing,  seed, 
cattle  and  other  articles  by  the  company  to  the  settlers  greatly 
assist  in  the  early  settlement  of  Oregon?' 

"Ans.     'Most  unquestionably.' 

"Int.  24.  'At  the  time  of  the  Whitman  massacre  and  of  the  In- 
dian disturbance  were  not  the  agents  of  the  company  prompt  and 
active  in  their  efforts  to  rescue  sufferers  and  to  punish  the  guilty?' 

"Ans.  'They  furnished  provisions  and  ammunition  to  assist  in 
carrying  on  the  war  against  the  Cayuses,  which  followed  the  Whit- 
man massacre;  they  assisted  in  rescuing  the  sufferers,  but  I  do  not 
know  that  they  took  any  part  in  punishing  the  guilty,  except  in 
selling  supplies  to  the  provisional  government  as  required;  they 
were  trading  in  the  country  and  desired  the  good  will  of  both  whites 
and  Indians.'  " 

Mr.  J.  G.  Campbell's  testimony  is  on  pp.  228-233  of  Vol.  V.,  and 
only  the  following  concerns  this  discussion : 

"Int.  1.    'State  your  age,  residence  and  occupation.' 

"Ans.  'Age  forty-nine  years;  residence,  Oregon  City;  account- 
ant' 

"Int.  2.    'When  did  you  first  come  to  Oregon?' 

"Ans.    'In  the  fall  of  1843.' 

"Int.  3.  'Were  you  ever  in  the  employ  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  ? 
If  so,  state  where,  and  during  what  years?' 

"Ans.  'In  Oregon  City  in  the  year  1846,  probably  in  1845  and 
in  the  beginning  of  1847.' 

"Cross-examination : 

"Int.  5.  'Did  not  the  company  allow  as  high  prices  for  wheat 
and  produce  and  sell  goods  as  low  as  any  trading-house  in  Oregon, 
qualities  being  the  same?' 

"Ans.    'Taking  the  pro  rata,  they  did  so,  decidedly.' 

"Int.  6.  'In  your  judgment  was  not  the  existence  of  the  com- 
pany and  its  business  in  Oregon  of  great  advantage  in  promoting 
the  prosperity  of  the  people  and  developing  the  resources  of  the 
country  ?' 

"Ans.  'I  have  always  considered  it  a  great  advantage  to  both 
parties.' 

"Int.  7.  'If  the  company  had  not  been  here  do  you  not  believe 
that  the  safety  of  the  settlers  would  have  been  greatly  endangered 
or  their  prosperity  retarded?' 

"Ans.    'I  do,  very  much  so.' 

"Int.  8.  'Do  you  not  know  that  the  company  gave  liberal  credits 
to  settlers  on  their  arrival  when  they  were  without  means  to  sup- 
port themselves  and  their  families?' 

"Ans.    'They  did.' 


428  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

"Int.  9.  'Did  not  the  company  extend  those  credits  from  year 
to  year,  subsequently,  if  settlers  were  in  needy  circumstances?' 

''Ans.    '1  do  not  know  that  they  extended  any  after  1846.' 

"Int.  10.  'Do  you  not  know  that  up  to  the  time  that  you  left  the 
company  many  of  the  settlers  were  indebted  to  the  company  for 
supi)lies  furnished  to  them?' 

'*Ans.    'I  know  they  were.' 

"Int.  11.  'Can  you  state  about  the  amount  of  that  indebtedness 
as  appeared  ujmn  what  was  called  the  settlers'  balance?' 

"Ans.  'I  never  saw  a  balance  sheet  after  1845 ;  at  the  closing 
of  1845  was  due  forty-odd  thousand  dollars,  including  a  large 
amount  due  from  the  missions.' 

"Int.  14.  'Have  you  any  means  of  knowing  whether  the  debts 
of  which  you  speak  in  1845  were  ever  paid  in  whole  or  in  part?' 

"Ans.     'They  were  paid  in  part;  how  big  a  part  I  don't  know.' 

'*Int.  16.  'Do  you  know  whether  the  company  ever  charged  the 
indebtedness  of  settlers  to  Dr.  McLoughlin?' 

"Ans.     'I  never  heard  of  their  having  done  so.' 

''Int.  17.  'Were  you  on  intimate  terms  with  Dr.  McLoughlin 
from  1845  until  his  death  and  residing  in  the  same  town  with  him?' 

"Ans.     'I  was.' 

"Int.  18.  'Did  you  ever  hear  him  speak  of  his  relations  with 
the  company  after  retiring  from  it,  with  reference  to  credits  with, 
settlers?' 

"Ans.     'Yes,  I  have.' 

"Int.  19.  'Did  he  ever  say  that  he  had  been  obliged  to  pay  any 
part  of  the  debts  due  from  settlers?' 

"Ans.     'T  never  heard  him  say  so.' 

"Int.  20.  'While  in  the  company's  service  were  notes  given  by 
settlers  for  what  was  due;  if  so,  to  whom  were  they  made  payable, 
and  why?' 

"Ans.  'Notes  were  given,  made  payable  to  John  McLoughlin, 
C.  F.  (Chief  Factor),  and  John  McLoughlin,  agent  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co. ;  and  the  why  was,  I  told  the  doctor  they  ought  not  to  be 
drawn  in  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  name,  but  in  an  individual's 
name.' 

"Direct  examination  resumed: 

"Int.  1.  'Do  you  not  know  that  Dr.  McLoughlin  had  great  diflS- 
culty  with  the  company  on  account  of  credits  extended  to  the  set- 
tlers, of  which  you  have  spoken?' 

"Ans.  'The  doctor  considered  that  he  had  been  very  much 
abused  by  the  company  in  regard  to  its  action  on  this  matter  of 
credits.' 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  429 

"Int.  2.  'What  offer,  if  you  know,  did  the  doctor  make  the  com- 
pany with  reference  to  these  accounts;  and  state  upon  whose  ad- 
vice this  offer  was  made?' 

"Ans.    'I  do  not  know  that  he  ever  made  any.' 

"Int.  3.  'What,  if  anything,  did  Dr.  McLoughlin  tell  you  upon 
the  subject?' 

"Ans.  'I  decline  to  answer  the  question,  as  I  do  not  desire  to 
make  public  confidential  communications;  I  was  clerk  for  the  doc- 
tor and  the  company  at  the  same  time,  keeping  both  sets  of  books.' 

"Cross-examination  resumed : 

"Int.  1.  'How  long  did  you  continue  to  act  as  clerk  or  agent 
for  Dr.  McLoughlin?' 

"Ans.     'Until  May,  1847.'" 

Of  the  migration  of  1844  only  M.  T.  Simmons  testified,  and  his 
testimony  so  far  as  it  bore  at  all  on  this  discussion  has  already 
been  quoted  (Cf.  pp.  387-388,  o/ite). 

Of  the  migration  of  1845  Messrs.  William  Barlow,  W.  W.  Buck, 
J.  S.  Rinearson,  James  Taylor  and  James  Welch  were  called,  but 
only  Mr.  Buck's  testimony  (which  is  on  pp.  209-218  of  this  same 
Vol.  V.)  contains  anything  pertinent  to  this  discussion,  as  follows: 
(The  testimony  of  the  others  being  merely  their  estimates  of  the 
value  of  the  land  and  buildings,  etc.) 

"Int.  1.    'What  is  your  age,  residence  and  occupation?' 

"Ans.  'Sixty-two  years;  Oregon  City;  president  and  superin- 
tendent of  the  Oregon  City  Paper  Manufacturing  Co.;  also  in  con- 
nection with  my  son  carrying  on  a  saw  mill.  I  have  been  to  some 
extent  a  contractor  of  wooden  buildings.' 

"Int.  2.  'When  did  you  come  to  Oregon  and  where  did  you  first 
locate?' 

"Ans.  'I  arrived  in  Oregon  in  November,  1845 ;  for  a  few  months 
stopped  on  what  is  called  Scapoose  Plains,  six  miles  above  the  place 
now  known  as  St.  Helen's ;  after  that  in  Portland  until  1848 ;  from 
that  time  to  the  present  in  Oregon  City.' 

"Int.  19.  'Were  you  acquainted  with  Dr.  John  McLoughlin 
during  his  lifetime?    If  so,  state  during  what  years.' 

"Ans.  'I  was  acquainted  with  Dr.  J.  McLoughlin  from  Novem- 
ber, 1845,  until  he  died  in  1857.' 

"Int.  20.  'Did  you  ever  have  any  conversation  with  Dr.  Mc- 
Loughlin about  difficulties  he  had  with  the  company's  managers 
(his  superiors)  growing  out  of  advances  made  to  the  early  settlers 
in  the  country?    If  so,  state  what  he  said.' 

"Ans.  'I  had  frequent  conversations  with  the  doctor,  in  which 
he  complained  of  being  badly  used  by  the  settlers  in  consequence 
of  having  advanced  goods  to  them,  and  could  not  get  his  pay;  that 


430  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

the  company  complaiued  of  him  for  makinfj  those  advances;  I  think 
he  said  he  had  to  assume  a  considerable  amount  himself.' 

*'Int.  21.     '\\'hat  oliicial  positions  have  you  held  in  Oregon?' 

''Ans.  'I  have  been  a  member  of  the  Legislature;  President  of 
the  Council  under  (the)  Territorial  Government;  I  was  also  for 
some  time  one  of  the  County  Commissioners  of  this  county  and 
afterward  Territorial  Treasurer.' 

''Cross-examination : 

"Int.  47.  'At  what  time  were  the  conversations  with  Dr.  Mc- 
Loughlin  to  which  you  have  referred?' 

''Ans.     'After  the  year  1848.' 

"Int.  48.  'Are  you  certain  that  what  the  doctor  said  was  not 
that  he  feared  the  company  might  compel  him  to  assume  settlers' 
debts  because  he  had  given  credit  contrary  to  orders?' 

"Ans.  'That  was  the  impression  that  I  got  from  the  doctor  and 
what  I  intended  to  have  said  in  my  direct  answer;  I  am  not  posi- 
tive whether  he  said  he  feared  the  company  would  charge  him  or 
had  charged  him.'  " 

At  the  1880  meeting  of  the  Oregon  Pioneer  Association  Hon.  J. 
W.  Nesmith  delivered  the  annual  address,  in  which  (Transactions 
1880,  p.  2G)  is  the  following  paragraph: 

"I  have  in  my  possession  a  copy  of  a  paper  found  among  the 
manuscripts  left  by  Dr.  McLoughlin.  It  was  kindly  furnished  and 
presented  to  me  by  his  descendants.  I  had  intended  reading  it  to 
you  as  a  part  of  ray  address,  but  having  already  trespassed  too  long 
upon  your  patience  I  shall  hand  the  document  to  the  secretary  of 
the  society,  with  my  indorsement  of  the  truth  of  all  its  statements 
that  came  within  my  own  knowledge.  I  believe  it  to  be  the  most 
valuable  contribution  to  our  archives  that  we  have  ever  received 
from  any  quarter;  and  I  desire  to  say,  what  I  believe  all  old  pio- 
neers will  agree  to,  that  the  statements  of  this  paper  furnish  a 
thorough  and  complete  vindication  of  Dr.  McLoughlin's  acts  and 
conduct,  and  that  the  integrity  of  his  narrative  cannot  be  impeached 
by  any  honest  testimony." 

As  comparatively  few  people  can  easily  get  access  to  the  "Trans- 
actions Oregon  Pioneer  Association,"  and  as  no  one  can  really  un- 
derstand the  settlement  of  Oregon  without  carefully  reading  this 
document,  it  is  herein  inserted  in  full : 

"Copy  of  a  document  found  among  the  private  papers  of  the 
late  Dr.  John  McLoughlin. 

"  'In  1824  I  came  to  this  country  to  superintend  the  manage- 
ment of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  trade  on  the  coast,  and  we  came 
to  the  determination  to  abandon  Astoria  and  go  to  Fort  Vancou- 
ver, as  it  was  a  place  where  we  could  cultivate  the  soil  and  raise 
our  own  i)rovisions.' 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  431 

"  'In  March,  1825,  we  moved  there  and  that  spring  planted  pota- 
toes and  sowed  two  bushels  of  peas,  the  only  grain  we  had,  and  all 
we  had.  In  the  fall  I  received  from  New  York  (query,  "York  Fac- 
tory?") Factory  a  bushel  spring  wheat,  a  bushel  oats,  a  bushel  bar- 
ley, a  bushel  Indian  corn  and  a  quart  of  timothy,  and  all  of  which 
was  sown  in  proper  time,  and  which  produced  well  except  the  In- 
dian corn,  for  which  the  ground  was  too  poor  and  the  nights  rather 
cool,  and  continued  extending  our  improvements.' 

"  'In  1828  the  crop  was  suflScient  to  enable  us  to  dispense  with 
the  importation  of  flour,  etc' 

"  'In  1825,  from  what  I  had  seen  of  the  country,  I  formed  the 
conclusion  from  the  mildness  and  salubrity  of  the  climate  that  this 
was  the  finest  portion  of  North  America  that  I  had  seen  for  the 
residence  of  civilized  man,  and  as  the  farmers  could  not  cultivate 
the  ground  without  cattle,  and  as  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  had  only 
twenty-seven  (27)  head,  big  and  small,  and  as  I  saw  at  the  time  no 
possibility  of  getting  cattle  by  sea,  and  that  was  too  expensive,  I 
determined  that  no  cattle  should  be  killed  at  Vancouver  except  one 
bull  calf  every  year  for  rennet  to  make  cheese  till  we  had  an  ample 
stock  to  meet  all  our  demands  and  to  assist  settlers,  a  resolution 
to  which  I  strictly  adhered,  and  the  first  animal  killed  for  beef  was 
in  1838 ;  till  that  time  we  had  lived  on  fresh  and  salt  venison  and 
wild  fowl.  From  morality  and  policy  I  stopped  the  sale  and  issue 
of  spirituous  liquor  to  the  Indians,  but  to  do  this  effectually  I  had 
to  stop  the  sale  of  liquor  to  all  whites.  In  1834,  when  Mr.  Wyeth 
of  Boston  came,  he  began  by  selling  liquor,  but  on  my  assuring  him 
that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  sold  no  liquor  to  whites  or  Indians  he 
immediately  adopted  the  same  rule.' 

"  'One  night  in  August,  1828,  I  was  surprised  by  the  Indians 
making  a  great  noise  at  the  gate  of  the  fort,  saying  they  had  brought 
an  American,  The  gate  was  opened,  the  man  came  in,  but  was  so 
affected  he  could  not  speak.  After  sitting  down  some  minutes  to 
recover  himself  he  told  that  he  was,  he  thought,  the  only  survivor 
of  eighteen  (18)  men,  conducted  by  the  late  Jedediah  Smith.  All 
the  rest  he  thought  were  murdered.  The  party  left  San  Fran- 
cisco bound  to  their  rendezvous  at  the  Salt  Lake.  They  ascended 
the  Sacramento  "Valley,  but  finding  no  opening  to  cross  the  moun- 
tains to  go  east,  they  bent  their  course  to  the  coast,  which  they 
reached  at  the  mouth  of  Rogue  River,  then  came  along  the  beach 
to  the  Umpqua,  where  the  Indians  stole  their  ax,  and  as  it  was  the 
only  ax  they  had,  and  which  they  absolutely  required  to  make  rafts 
to  cross  rivers,  they  took  the  chief  prisoner  and  their  ax  was  re- 
turned. Early  the  following  morning  Smith  started  in  a  canoe 
with  two  (2)  men  and  an  Indian  and  left  orders  as  usual  to  allow 
no  Indians  to  come  into  camp.     But  to  gratify  their  passion  for 


432  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

women  the  men  neglected  to  follow  the  order,  allowed  the  Indians 
to  come  into  camp,  and  at  an  Indian  yell  five  or  six  Indians  fell 
upon  each  white  man.  At  the  time  the  narrator,  Black,  was  out  of 
the  crowd  and  had  just  finished  cleaning  and  loading  his  rifle. 
Three  (3)  Indians  jumped  on  him,  but  he  shook  them  off,  and  see- 
ing all  his  comrades  struggling  on  the  ground  and  the  Indians  stab- 
bing them,  he  fired  on  the  crowd  and  rushed  to  the  woods,  pursued 
by  the  Indians,  but  fortunately  escaped;  swam  across  the  Umpqua 
and  northward  in  the  hopes  of  reaching  the  Columbia,  where  he 
knew  we  were.  But  broken  down  by  hunger  and  misery,  as  he  had 
no  food  but  a  few  wild  berries  which  he  found  on  the  beach,  he  de- 
termined to  give  himself  up  to  the  Killimoux,  a  tribe  on  the  coast 
at  Cape  Lookout,  who  treated  him  with  great  humanity,  relieved 
his  wants  and  brought  him  to  the  fort,  for  which,  in  case  whites 
might  again  fall  in  their  power,  and  to  induce  them  to  act  kindly 
to  them,  I  rewarded  them  most  liberally.  But  as  Smith  and  his 
two  men  might  have  escaped  and"  (query,  might  perish)  "if  we 
made  no  search  for  them,  at  break  of  day  the  next  morning  I  sent 
Indian  runners  with  tobacco  to  the  Willamette  chiefs  to  tell  them 
to  send  their  people  in  search  of  Smith  and  his  two  men,  and  if 
they  found  them  to  bring  them  to  the  fort  and  I  would  pay  them, 
and  telling  them  if  any  Indians  hurt  these  men  we  would  punish 
them,  and  immediately  equipped  a  strong  party  of  forty  (40)  well- 
armed  men.  But  as  the  men  were  embarking,  to  our  great  joy 
Smith  and  his  two  men  arrived.' 

"  ^I  then  arranged  as  strong  a  party  as  I  could  make  to  recover 
all  we  could  of  Smith's  property.  I  divulged  my  plan  to  none, 
but  gave  written  instructions  to  the  officer,  to  be  opened  early' 
(query  only?)  'when  he  got  to  the  Umpqua,  because  if  known  before 
they  got  there  the  officers  would  talk  of  it  among  themselves,  the 
men  would  hear  it,  and  from  them  it  would  go  to  their  Indian  wives, 
who  were  spies  on  us,  and  my  plan  would  be  defeated.  The  plan 
was  that  the  officer  was,  as  usual,  to  invite  the  Indians  to  bring 
their  furs  to  trade,  just  as  if  nothing  had  happened.  Count  the 
furs,  but  as  the  American  trappers  mark  all  their  skins,  keep  these 
all  separate,  give  them  to  Mr.  Smith  and  not  pay  the  Indians  for 
them,  telling  them  that  they  belonged  to  him;  that  they  got  them 
by  murdering  Smith's  people.' 

"■  'They  denied  having  murdered  Smith's  people,  but  admitted 
they  bought  them  of  the  murderers.  The  officers  told  them  they 
must  look  to  the  murderers  for  the  payment,  which  they  did;  and 
as  the  murderers  would  not  restore  the  property  they  had  received 
a  war  was  kindled  among  them  and  the  murderers  were  punished 
more  severely  than  we  could  have  done,  and  which  Mr.  Smith  him- 
self admitted,  and  to  be  much  preferable  to  going  to  war  on  them^ 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  433 

as  we  could  not  distinguish  the  innocent  from  the  guilty,  who,  if 
they  chose,  might  fly  to  the  mountains,  where  we  could  not  find 
them.  In  this  way  we  recovered  property  for  Mr.  Smith  to  the 
amount  of  three  thousand  two  hundred  dollars  without  any  expense 
to  him,  and  which  was  done  from  a  principle  of  Christian  duty  and 
as  a  lesson  to  the  Indians  to  show  them  they  could  not  wrong  the 
whites  with  impunity.' 

"  'In  1828  Etienne  Lucier,  a  Willamette  trapper,  asked  me  if  I 
thought  this  would  become  a  settled  country.  I  told  him  wherever 
wheat  grew  he  might  depend  it  would  become  a  farming  country. 
He  asked  me  what  assistance  I  would  afford  him  to  settle  down  as  a 
farmer.  I  told  him  I  would  loan  him  seed  to  sow  and  wheat  to 
feed  himself  and  family,  to  be  returned  from  the  products  of  his 
farm,  and  sell  him  such  implements  as  were  in  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co.'s  store  at  fifty  per  cent,  on  prime  cost.  But  a  few  days  after  he 
came  back  and  told  me  he  thought  there  was  too  remote  a  prospect 
of  this  becoming  a  civilized  country,  and  as  there  were  no  clergy- 
men in  the  country  he  asked  me  a  passage  for  his  family  in  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  boats,  to  which  I  acceded.  He  started  in  Sep- 
tember to  meet  the  boats  at  the  mountains ;  the  express  came  in  too 
late  and  he  had  to  return,  and  went  to  hunt  for  the  winter.' 

"  'In  1829  he  again  applied  to  begin  to  farm.  I  told  him  that 
since  he  had  spoken  to  me  I  heard  that  several  of  the  trappers 
would  apply  for  assistance  to  begin  to  farm,  and  that  it  w^as  neces- 
sary for  me  to  come  to  a  distinct  understanding  with  him  to  serve 
as  a  rule  for  those  who  might  follow.  That  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
were  bound  under  heavy  penalties  to  discharge  none  of  their  ser- 
vants in  the  Indian  country  and  bound  to  return  them  to  the  place 
where  they  engaged  them.  That  this  was  done  to  prevent  vaga- 
bonds being  let  loose  among  the  Indians  and  incite  them  to  hos- 
tility to  the  whites.  But  as  I  knew  he  was  a  good,  honest  man,  and 
none  but  such  need  apply,  and  as  if  he  went  to  Canada  and  unfor- 
tunately died  before  his  children  could  provide  for  themselves  they 
would  become  objects  of  pity  and  a  burthen  to  others.  For  these 
reasons  I  would  assist  him  to  settle.  But  I  must  keep  him  and  all 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  servants  whom  I  allowed  to  settle  on  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  books  as  servants,  so  as  not  to  expose  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  and  me  to  a  fine,  but  they  would  work  for  themselves 
and  no  service  would  be  exacted  from  them.' 

"  'Many  of  the  Canadians  objected  to  go  to  the  Willamette,  be- 
cause it  was  to  become  American  territory,  which  I  told  them  it 
would,  as  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  1825  officially  informed  me  that 
in  no  event  could  the  British  Government  claim  extend  south  of 
the  Columbia,  and  that  they  were  afraid  they  would  not  have  the 
same  advantages  as  American  citizens.     I  told  them  from  the  fer- 


484  A((^(  ISITIOX    OF    OREGON 

tility  of  the  soil,  the  extent  of  prairie  and  the  easy  access  from  the 
sea  that  the  WiUaniette  (they  must  admit)  was  the  best  and  only 
place  adapted  to  form  a  settlement  which  would  have  a  beneficial 
eflfect  on  the  whole  country  north  of  San  Francisco,  where  we 
could  assist  and  protect  them  from  the  Indians  in  case  of  difficulty, 
and  as  to  advantages  I  did  not  know  what  they  would  have,  but 
this  I  knew,  that  the  American  Government  and  people  know  only 
two  classes  of  persons,  rogues  and  honest  men ;  that  they  punished 
the  first  and  i)rotected  the  last,  and  it  depended  only  upon  them- 
selves to  what  class  they  would  belong.' 

"  'Others  wanted  to  go  and  live  with  the  relatives  of  their  wives, 
but  as  their  children  would  be  brought  up  with  the  sympathies  and 
feelings  of  Indians,  and  as  the  half-breeds  are  in  general  leaders 
among  Indians  and  they  would  be  a  thorn  in  the  side  of  the  whites, 
1  insisted  they  should  go  to  the  Willamette,  where  their  children 
could  be  brought  up  as  whites  and  Christians,  Jind  brought  to  cul- 
tivate the  ground  and  imbued  with  the  feelings  and  sym])athies  of 
whites,  and  where  they  and  their  mothers  would  serve  as  hostages 
for  the  good  behavior  of  their  relatives  in  the  interior.  As  Indians 
judge  of  whites  by  themselves,  and  think  if  they  injure  whites  on 
their  lands  the  whites  would  revenge  it  by  murdering  their  Indian 
relatives  among  them,  and  as  the  settlement  increased  by  the  addi- 
tion of  Indian  women  and  half-breeds  the  turbulence  of  the  Indian 
tribes  would  diminish,  and  certainly  the  Cayuse  war  would  not 
have  been  (inelled  so  easily  as  it  was  if  other  half-breeds  had  not 
joined  the  Americans ;  and  I  have  great  pleasure  to  be  able  to  say, 
what  must  be  admitted  by  all  who  know  them,  that  the  Canadian 
trappers  and  half-breeds  who  have  settled  as  farmers  are  as  peace- 
able, orderly,  neighborly  and  industrious  a  set  of  men  as  any  in 
the  settlement;  and  that  so  far  the  Canadian  settlement  has  pro- 
duced and  supplied  three-fourths  of  the  grain  that  has  been  ex- 
ported.' 

"'In  1S32  Mr.  Nathaniel  Wythe  (Wyeth)  of  Cambridge,  near 
Boston,  came  across  land  with  a  party  of  men,  but  as  the  vessel 
he  expected  to  meet  here  with  supplies  was  wrecked  on  the  way  he 
returned  to  the  East  with  three  (8)  men.  The  remainder  joined 
the  AN'illamette  Settlement  and  got  supplies  and  were  assisted  by 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  servants,  and  to  be  paid  the  same  price  for 
their  wheat — that  is,  three  shillings  sterling  (/.  e.,  72  cents)  per 
bushel — and  purchase  their  supplies  at  fifty  per  cent,  on  prime 
cost  (i.  e.,  first  cost  in  London,  L^ngland).' 

"  'In  1834  Mr.  Wyeth  returned  with  a  fresh  party  and  met  the 
vessel  with  sup])lies  here  and  started  with  a  large  outfit  for  Fort 
Hall,  Avhich  he  had  built  on  his  way,  and  in  1880  he  abandoned  the 
business  and  returned  to  the  States,  and  those  of  his  men  that  re- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  435 

mained  in  the  country  joined  the  settlements  and  were  assisted  as 
the  others  on  the  same  terms  as  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  servants, 
and  in  justice  to  Mr.  Wyeth  I  have  great  pleasure  to  be  able  to 
state  that  as  a  rival  in  trade  I  always  found  him  open,  manly,  frank 
and  fair,  and,  in  short,  in  all  his  contracts  a  perfect  gentleman  and 
an  honest  man,  doing  all  he  could  to  support  morality  and  encour- 
age industry  in  the  settlement.' 

''  'In  1834  Messrs.  Jason  and  Daniel  Lee  and  Messrs.  Walker 
and  P.  L.  Edwards  came  with  Mr.  Wyeth  to  establish  a  mission  in 
the  Flathead  country.  I  observed  to  them  that  it  was  too  danger- 
ous for  them  to  establish  a  mission ;  that  to  do  good  to  the  Indians 
they  must  establish  themselves  where  they  could  collect  them  around 
them,  teach  them  first  to  cultivate  the  ground  and  live  more  com- 
fortably than  they  do  by  hunting,  and  as  they  do  this  teach  them 
religion;  that  the  Willamette  afforded  them  a  fine  field,  and  that 
they  ought  to  go  there  and  they  would  get  the  same  assistance  as 
the  settlers.  They  followed  my  advice  and  went  to  the  Willamette, 
and  it  is  but  justice  to  these  pioneers  to  say  that  no  men,  in  my 
opinion,  could  exert  themselves  more  zealously  than  they  did  till 
1840,  when  they  received  a  large  reinforcement  of  forty  (40)  or 
more  persons ;  then  the  newcomers  began  to  neglect  their  duties, 
discord  sprung  up  among  them  and  the  mission  broke  up.' 

"  'I  made  it  a  rule  that  none  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  servants 
should  be  allowed  to  join  the  settlements  unless  he  had  fifty  pounds 
sterling  before  him,  as  he  required  that  sum  to  supply  him  with 
clothing  and  implements.  He  that  begins  business  on  credit  is  sel- 
dom so  careful  and  industrious  as  he  who  does  business  on  his  own 
means.  By  this  I  effected  two  objects — I  made  the  men  more  saving 
and  industrious  and  attached  them  to  their  farms.  If  I  had  not 
done  so,  they  would  have  abandoned  on  the  least  difficulty.  But 
having  their  means  invested  on  their  improvements  they  saw  if 
they  abandoned  the  loss  would  be  theirs ;  they  therefore  persisted 
and  succeeded.  When  the  settlement  was  formed,  though  the  Amer- 
can  trappers  had  no  means,  they  were  assisted  on  credit,  and  all  in 
three  years  paid  up  from  the  product  of  their  farms.' 

"  'Every  settler  had  as  much  wheat  on  loan  as  he  wanted  to  be- 
gin with  and  I  lent  them  each  two  cows,  as  in  1825  we  had  only 
twenty-seven  head,  big  and  small,  old  and  young.' 

"  'If  I  sold  they  would  of  course  be  entitled  to  the  increase  and 
I  would  not  have  the  means  to  assist  the  new  settlers  and  the  set- 
tlement would  be  retarded,  as  those  purchasers  who  offered  me  two 
hundred  dollars  for  a  cow  would  put  such  a  price  on  the  increase 
as  would  put  it  out  of  the  power  of  poor  settlers  to  buy.  This 
would  prevent  industrious  men  settling.  For  these  reasons  I  would 
not  sell,  but  loaned,  as  I  say,  two  cows  to  each  settler,  and  in  case 


436  ACQUrsTTTOX    OF    OREGON 

the  increase  of  settlers  might  be  greater  than  we  could  afford  to 
supply  with  cattle  I  reserved  the  right  to  take  any  cattle  I  required 
(above  his  two  cows)  from  any  settler  to  assist  new  settlers.' 

"  'To  the  Methodist  Mission,  as  it  was  a  ]>ublic  institution,  I 
lent  seven  oxen,  one  bull  and  eight  cows  with  their  calves.' 

"  'In  the  beginning  several  settlers  lost  cattle,  poisoned  by  eat- 
ing water  honilock.  It  has  been  said  by  the  late  Mr.  Thurston,  Dele- 
gate from  Oregon,  on  the  lloor  of  Congress,  that  settlers  paid  for 
dead  cattle.  This  is  a  wanton  falsehood,  as  it  is  well  known  to  all 
old  settlers  that  no  settler  paid  a  cent  for  dead  cattle ;  it  was  a  loss 
to  the  comi»any.' 

"  'In  1830  we  found  means  of  forming  a  comi)any  to  go  to  Cali- 
fornia for  cattle.  I  took  half  the  stock  for  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co., 
so  that  by  purchasing  a  larger  number  (as  the  expense  of  driving 
five  hundred  or  a  thousand  was  the  same)  it  would  make  the  cattle 
cheaper.  Those  of  the  settlers  that  had  means  ])ut  it  in  the  stock; 
those  that  had  none  engaged  as  drivers  at  one  dollar  per  day,  to  be 
paid  in  cattle  at  their  actual  cost.  Mr.  Slocum  (Slacum),  who 
came  here  in  a  chartered  vessel,  gave  them  a  passage  gratis  from 
this  ])lace  to  San  Francisco.  Mr.  Ewing  Young  was  selected  to  con- 
duct the  party.  Mr.  P.  L.  Edwards,  who  came  with  Messrs.  Lee 
of  the  Methodist  Mission,  but  now  a  lawyer  in  California,  was  ap- 
pointed treasurer.  They  brought,  I  think,  about  seven  hundred 
head  of  cattle,  which  cost  eight  dollars  per  head  rendered.  In  the 
Willamette  the  settlers  kept  the  tame  and  broken-in  oxen  they  had 
belonging  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  gave  their  California  wild 
cattle  in  the  place,  so  that  they  found  themselves  stocked  with 
tame  cattle  which  cost  them  only  eight  dollars  per  head,  and  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  favor  the  settlers  took  calves  in  place  of  grown- 
up cattle  because  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  wanted  them  for  beef. 
These  calves  would  gi-ow  u])  before  they  were  required.' 

*'  'In  1840,  as  I  already  stated,  the  Methodist  Mission  received 
a  large  reinforcement.  I  had  selected  for  a  claim  Oregon  City  in 
1829,  made  imj)rovements  on  it  and  had  a  large  quantity  of  timber 
squared.  The  superintendent  api)lied  to  me  for  a  loan  of  it  to  build 
a  mission  house.  I  lent  them  the  timber  and  had  a  ])lace  ])ointed 
out  to  them  upon  which  to  build.  In  1840  the  Methodist  Mission 
formed  a  milling  association  and  jumped  part  of  my  claim  and  be- 
gan to  build  a  saw  and  gi-ist  mill.  Tliey  assumed  the  right  to  judge 
of  my  rights  and  said  that  I  could  not  hold  it  as  part  of  my  claim, 
though  the  stream  that  separates  the  islet  from  the  main  land  is 
not  more  than  forty  feet  wide  in  summer.     This  island  is  what  is 

called  ''Abernethy  Island"  and  is  about  acres  in  extent. 

In  1842  Mr.  ^Valler,  the  resident  missionary  in  the  house  to  build 
which  I  lent  timber,  which  thev  never  returned,  and  gave  the  ground 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  437 

upon  which  to  build,  set  up  a  claim  to  Oregon  City  in  opposition 
to  me,  but  after  some  difficulty  I  paid  them  |500  and  he  gave  it 
up.  I  preferred  to  do  this  and  have  done  with  it  rather  than  here- 
after trouble  the  Government  with  it.' 

"  ^In  1842  the  first  party  of  regular  immigrants — about  fifty — 
came  from  the  States.  They  got  all  the  assistance  they  required, 
but  in  1843  most  of  them,  not  liking  the  country,  went  with  their 
leader — Mr.  Hastings — to  California.' 

'^  *In  1843  about  800  immigrants  arrived  from  the  States.  I  saw 
by  the  looks  of  the  Indians  that  they  were  excited  and  I  watched 
them.  As  the  first  stragglers  were  arriving  at  Vancouver  in  canoes 
I  was  standing  on  the  bank ;  nearer  the  water  there  was  a  group  of 
ten  or  twelve  Indians.  One  of  them  bawled  out  to  his  compan- 
ions: ''It  is  good  for  us  to  kill  these  Bostons."  Struck  with  the 
excitement  I  had  seen  in  the  countenances  of  the  Indians  since 
they  had  heard  the  report  of  the  immigration  coming,  I  felt  certain 
they  were  inclined  to. mischief  and  that  he  spoke  thus  loud  as  a 
feeler  to  sound  me  and  take  their  measure  accordingly.  I  imme- 
diately rushed  on  them  with  my  cane,  calling  out  at  the  same  time : 
"Who  is  the  dog  that  says  it  is  a  good  thing  to  kill  the  Bostons?" 
The  fellow,  trembling,  excused  himself:  *'I  spoke  without  meaning 
harm,  but  The  Dalles  Indians  say  so."  "Well,"  said  I,  "The  Dalles 
Indians  are  dogs  for  saying  so,  and  you  also,"  and  left  him,  as  if 
I  had  remained  longer  it  would  have  had  a  bad  effect.  I  had  done 
enough  to  convince  them  I  would  not  allow  them  to  do  wrong  to 
the  immigrants  with  impunity.  From  this  Indian  saying,  in  the 
way  he  did,  that  The  Dalles  Indians  said  it  was  good  to  kill  these 
Bostons,  I  felt  it  my  duty  to  do  all  I  could  to  avert  so  horrid  a 
deed.' 

"  'Mr.  P.  L.  Edwards,  whom  I  mentioned  came  in  1834  with 
Messrs.  Lee  and  left  in  1838,  sent  me  a  letter  by  Gen.  McCarver, 
stating  he  had  given  a  letter  of  introduction  to  me  to  P.  H.  Burnett, 
Esq.  I  immediately  formed  my  plan  and  kept  my  knowledge  of 
the  horrid  design  of  the  Indians  secret,  as  I  felt  certain  that  if  the 
Americans  knew  it  these  men,  acting  independent  of  each  other, 
would  be  at  once  for  fighting,  which  would  lead  to  their  total  de- 
struction, and  I  sent  two  (2)  boats  with  provisions  to  meet  them; 
sent  provisions  to  Mr.  Burnett  and  a  large  quantity  of  provisions 
for  sale  to  those  who  would  purchase  and  to  be  given  up  to  those 
who  had  not  the  means,  being  confident  that  the  fright  I  had  given 
(as  I  already  stated)  the  Indians  who  said  it  was  a  good  thing  to 
kill  the  Bostons  was  known  at  The  Dalles  before  our  boats  were 
there,  and  that  with  the  presence  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  people, 
and  the  assistance  they  afforded  the  immigrants,  would  deter  the 
Indians  from  doing  them  any  wrong,  and  I  am  happy  to  be  able  to 


438  ACQUI^ITJON    OF    OREGON 

say  I  entirely  succeeded.  At  first  I  thought  these  Indians  were 
excited  by  some  of  the  Iroquois  Indians  in  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s 
service  and  tried  to  find  if  so,  but  found  nothing  to  enlighten  me 
on  the  sul)joct.' 

*•  'About  a  month  after  Dr.  Whitman  came  from  his  mission 
near  Walhi  Walla  to  Vancouver,  and  as  The  Dalles  was  on  his 
way  and  as  he  had  seen  the  ])rincii)al  men  there,  it  occurred  to  me 
that  he  might  have  heard  of  it  and  told  him  what  I  heard  the  In- 
dian say  and  how  I  had  alarmed  him,  what  I  had  done  to  deter 
them  and  my  suspicion  that  all  this  sprung  from  some  of  our  ras- 
cally Iroquois,  and  that  I  was  anxious  to  find  that  rascal  out  to 
punish  him  as  an  example  to  deter  others.  ''Oh,"  says  the  doctor, 
''I  know  all  about  it."  "You  do,  doctor,"  said  I.  "Yes,"  said  the 
doctor,  "and  I  have  known  it  for  two  years."  "You  have  known  it 
for  two  years  and  you  told  me  nothing!  Pray  tell  me  his  name." 
The  doctor,  seeing  I  was  on  the  wrong  scent,  said:  "His  name  is 
Thomas  Hill."  After  thinking  for  some  time  I  replied:  "The  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  has  no  man  of  that  name  in  the  service."  "Oh,"  says 
the  doctor,  "Tom  Hill,  the  Shawnee."  This  Indian,  it  is  said,  had 
been  educated  at  Dartmouth  College  in  the  States,  had  told  the 
Indians  that  a  few  Americans  had  come  to  settle  on  their  lands; 
that  the  Shawnees  allowed  them,  but  when  the  Americans  were 
strong  enough  they  drove  the  Shawnees  off  and  now  the  Shawnees 
have  no  lands,  and  had  urged  the  Indians  to  allow  no  x\mericans  to 
settle  on  their  lands,  which  advice  the  Indians  about  Walla  Walla 
say  the  Cayuses  are  following  to  this  day,  and  the  Indians  were 
inclined  to  follow  by  killing  the  immigrants  who  first  came,  and 
which  I  believe  tliej'  would  have  done  but  for  the  decided  and  cau- 
tious manner  that  I  acted.  And  the  reason  the  Indian  made  use 
of  the  expression  he  did  was  because  I  punished  the  murderers  of 
the  Smith  ])arty  and  before  acting  they  wanted  to  know  how  I 
would  treat  them,  and  most  certainly  if  I  had  not  been  most 
anxious  for  the  safety  of  the  immigrants  and  to  discharge  to  them 
the  duties  of  a  Christian  my  ear  would  not  have  caught  so  quickly 
the  words,  "It  is  a  good  thing  to  kill  these  Bostons,"  and  acted  as 
I  did.  In  fact,  if  the  immigrants  had  all  been  my  brothers  and 
sisters  I  could  not  have  done  more  for  them.  I  fed  the  hungry, 
caused  the  sick  to  be  attended  to  and  nursed,  furnished  them  every 
assistance  so  long  as  they  required  it,  and  which  some  have  not 
paid  to  this  day,  though  abundantly  able,  and  for  which,  if  they  do 
not  pay,  I  am  answerable  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  It  may  be  said, 
and  has  been  said,  that  I  was  too  liberal  in  making  these  advances. 
It  is  not  so,  but  it  was  done  judiciously  and  prudently.' 

"  'When  the  immigration  of  1842  came,  we  had  enough  of  bread- 
stuffs  in  the  country  for  one  year,  but  as  the  immigrants  reported 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  439 

that  next  season  there  would  be  a  greater  immigration  it  was  evi- 
dent if  there  was  not  a  proportionate  increase  of  seed  sown  in  1843 
and  1844  there  wonld  be  a  famine  in  the  conntry  in  1845,  which 
would  lead  to  trouble,  as  those  that  had  families,  to  save  them  from 
starvation  would  be  obliged  to  have  recourse  to  violence  to  get  food 
for  them.  To  avert  this  I  freely  supplied  the  immigrants  of  1843 
and  1844  with  the  necessary  articles  to  open  farms  and  by  these 
means  avoided  the  evils.  In  short,  I  afforded  every  assistance  to 
the  immigrants  so  long  as  they  required  it  and  by  management  I 
kept  peace  in  the  country  and  in  some  cases  had  to  put  up  with  a 
great  deal ;  for  instance,  when  the  milling  company  jumped  part  of 
my  claim,  the  island  upon  which  they  built  a  mill  and  which  sub- 
sequently Abernethy  purchased,  and  when  Williamson  jumped  part 
of  Fort  Vancouver,  as  may  be  seen  by  my  correspondence  with  the 
provisional  government  on  the  subject  and  which  occurred  in  the 
presence  of  several  American  citizens,  who  I  am  happy  to  say 
strongly  expressed  their  disapproval  of  Williamson's  conduct,  and 
which  I  am  inclined  to  believe  made  him  desist,  and  it  will  be  seen, 
to  their  credit,  that  the  executive  committee  acted  in  a  straightfor- 
ward, manly  and  correct  manner,  and  it  was  by  such  conduct  on 
the  part  of  respectable  American  citizens  that  peace  and  order 
were  maintained  in  the  country.  It  is  true  several  thought  I  was 
too  forbearing,  but  when  I  saw  how  much  the  good  on  both  sides 
would  suffer  if  I  acted  differently,  and  that  a  war  between  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States  might  be  caused  by  it,  I  considered 
it  my  duty  to  act  as  I  did,  and  by  which  I  think  I  may  have  pre- 
vented a  war  between  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain.  And 
how  have  I  been  treated  by  both?' 

"  'By  British  demagogues  I  have  been  represented  as  a  traitor. 
For  what?  Because  I  acted  as  a  Christian;  saved  American  citi- 
zens, men,  women  and  children  from  the  Indian  tomahawk  and 
enabled  them  to  make  farms  to  support  their  families.' 

"  'American  demagogues  have  been  base  enough  to  assert  that  I 
had  caused  American  citizens  to  be  massacred  by  hundreds  by  the 
savages.  I,  who  saved  all  I  could.  I  have  been  represented  by  the 
delegate  from  Oregon,  the  late  S.  R.  Thurston,  as  doing  all  I  could 
to  prevent  the  settling,  while  it  was  well  known  to  every  American 
settler  who  is  acquainted  with  the  history  of  the  Territory  if  this 
is  not  a  downright  falsehood  and  most  certainly  will  say  that  he 
most  firmly  believes  that  I  did  all  I  could  to  promote  its  settle- 
ment and  that  I  could  not  have  done  more  for  the  settlers  if  they 
had  been  my  brothers  and  sisters,  and  after  being  the  first  person 
to  take  a  claim  in  the  country  and  assisting  the  immigrants  as  I 
have  my  claim  is  reserved,  after  having  expended  all  the  means  I 
had  to  improve  it,  while  every  other  settler  in  the  country  gets  his. 


440  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

Hilt  as  I  felt  convinced  that  any  disturbance  between  us  here  might 
leiul  to  a  war  between  TFi-eat  Britain  and  the  States  I  felt  it  my 
boiinden  duty  as  a  Christian  to  act  as  I  did,  and  which  I  think 
averted  the  evil,  and  which  was  so  displeasing  to  some  English 
demagogues  that  they  represented  me  to  the  British  Government  as 
a  person  so  partial  to  American  interests  as  selling  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.  goods  in  my  charge  chea])er  to  American  than  I  did  to 
British  subjects.  On  the  other  hand,  though,  if  the  American  im- 
migrants had  been  my  brothers  and  sisters  I  could  not  have  done 
more  for  them;  yet,  after  acting  as  I  have,  spending  my  means  and 
doing  my  utmost  to  settle  the  country,  my  claim  is  reserved,  while 
every  other  settler  in  the  county  gets  his;  and  how  much  this  has 
injured  me,  is  daily  injuring  me,  it  is  needless  to  say,  and  certainly 
it  is  a  treatment  I  do  not  deserve  and  which  I  did  not  expect.' 

"  'To  be  brief,  I  founded  this  settlement  and  prevented  a  war 
betwt^en  the  T'nited  States  and  Great  Britain,  and  for  doing  this 
peaceably  and  quietly  I  was  treated  by  the  British  in  such  a  man- 
ner that  from  self-respect  I  resigned  my  situation  in  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Co.'s  service,  by  which  I  sacrificed  |12,000  per  annum,  and 
the  ''Oregon  Land  Bill"  shows  the  treatment  I  received  from  the 
Americans.'  " 

Lest  any  should  suppose  that  the  1843  petition  mentioned  on 
p.  333,  ante,  contains  something  which  is  really  evidence  of  wrong- 
doing on  the  part  of  Dr.  McLoughlin  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  I 
will  now  quote  it  and  Dr.  McLoughlin's  reply  to  it. 

It  was  presented  in  the  United  States  Senate  by  D.  R.  Atchison, 
the  successor  of  Senator  Linn,  on  February  7,  1844,  and  on  his 
motion  ordered  printed,  and  on  account  of  the  puerility  of  its  ac- 
cusations was  never  again  acted  upon  in  Congress. 

It  is  Sen.  Ex.  Doc,  Vol  III.,  No.  105,  28th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  and 
on  its  title  page  reads:  "February  7,  1844.  Laid  on  the  table  and 
ordered  to  be  printed." 

The  reader  will  see  on  reading  it  why  several  of  the  best  Ameri- 
can citizens  in  Oregon  were  ashamed  of  it  and  refused  to  sign  it. 

Its  evident  purpose  w^as  to  assist  the  iniquitous  scheme  of  Rev. 
A.  F.  Waller  and  some  of  the  more  unscrii])uloiis  of  his  colleagues 
in  the  Methodist  Mission  (which  was  then  in  its  death  throes,  being 
entirely  broken  up  the  following  year)  (Cf.  Chapter  II.,  Part  II., 
infra)  to  rob  Dr.  McLoughlin  of  his  claim  to  the  townsite  and  water 
power  at  Willamette  Falls,  where  he  had  located  a  claim  in  1829, 
not  for  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  but  for  himself  individually,  five 
years  before  the  liist  Methodists  reached  Oregon  to  establish  a 
mission. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  441 

It  goes  without  saying  that  under  the  treaty  of  1827  any  British 
subject  had  exactly  the  same  right  to  locate  in  any  place  in  the 
Oregon  Territory  that  any  American  citizen  had. 

For  full  particulars  of  this  scheme  to  jump  Dr.  McLoughlin's 
claim  and  other  things  illustrating  the  sad  decadence  of  the  Metho- 
dist Mission  after  the  arrival  of  the  great  reinforcement  of  1839-40 
Cf.: 

(a)  Hon.  J.  W.  Nesmith's  Address,  Transactions  Oregon  Pio- 
neer Association,  1880,  pp.  19-22. 

(b)  Hon.  El  wood  Evans'  "History  of  the  Pacific  Northwest," 
Vol.  I.,  pp.  250-254. 

(c)  H.  H.  Bancroft's  "History  of  the  Pacific  Coast,"  Vol.  XXIV. 
(being  "Oregon,"  Vol.  I.,"  pp.  203-225). 

(d)  Their  action  concerning  The  Dalles  townsite,  as  stated  by 
United  States  Supreme  Court  and  summarized  in  Chapter  III.  of 
Book  II.,  infra. 

For  more  than  twenty-four  years  the  authorship  of  this  petition 
was  concealed,  but  on  September  1,  1887,  in  a  letter  to  Hon.  Elwood 
Evans,  Kobert  Shortess  claimed  that  he  made  the  rough  draft  of  it, 
and  that  George  Abernethy,  the  steward  of  the  Methodist  Mission, 
wrote  it  in  the  form  in  which  it  was  sent,  but  would  not  consent 
that  it  should  be  circulated  in  his  handwriting.  (Cf.  Evans'  "His- 
tory Pacific  Northwest,"  Vol.  I.,  p.  243.)  It  was  dated  March  25, 
1843,  and  signed  by  sixty-five  persons. 

Shortess,  who  never  cut  any  figure  in  Oregon  affairs  after  the 
organization  of  a  territorial  government,  was  probably  in  this  a 
mere  catspaw  for  those  who  were  greedy  to  appropriate  that  which 
by  every  principle  of  law  and  equity  belonged  to  Dr.  McLoughlin. 
It  is  no  wonder  that  the  authors  and  circulators  of  it  were  ashamed 
to  allow  Dr.  White,  the  sub-Indian  agent,  to  have  a  copy  of  it.  "A 
petition  started  from  this  country  today,  making  bitter  complaints 
against  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  Gov.  McLoughlin.  In  referring 
to  it — as  a  copy  was  denied — I  shall  only  say  had  any  gentleman 
disconnected  with  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  been  at  half  the  pains  and 
expense  to  establish  a  claim  to  the  Willamette  Falls  very  few  would 
have  raised  an  opposition.  His  half-bushel  measure  I  know  to  be 
exact  according  to  the  English  imperial  standard.  The  gentlemen 
of  this  company  have  been  fathers  and  fosterers  of  the  colony,  ever 
encouraging  peace,  industry  and  good  order,  and  have  sustained  a 
character  for  hospitality  and  integrity  too  well  established  to  be 
easily  shaken."  (Cf.  White's  report  to  Commissioner  of  Indian 
Affairs,  quoted  on  pp.  172-201  of  "White's  Ten  Years  in  Oregon." 
Date,  April  1,  1843). 

"The  Petition  of  1843 : 


442  ACQrrsiTTOX    OF    OREGON 

''To  the  IToriorable  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives  of 
the  T'nited  States  of  America  in  Congress  Assembled: 

•We,  the  nndersifjned,  settlers  south  of  the  Columbia  River,  beg 
leave  respectfully  to  represent  to  vour  honoi-nble  body: 

''As  has  been  before  represented  to  your  honorable  body,  we 
consider  ourselves  citizens  of  the  United  States  and  acknowledge 
the  right  of  the  Ignited  States  to  extend  its  jurisdiction  over  us; 
and  the  object  of  the  present  memorial  is  to  ask  that  the  protection 
of  the  Tnited  States  may  be  extended  to  us  as  soon  as  possible. 

"llltherto  our  numbers  have  been  small,  and  the  few  difficulties 
ihai  arose  in  the  settlement  were  speedily  and  satisfactorily  set- 
tled, lint  as  our  settlement  increases  in  numbers  so  our  difficul- 
ties increase  in  number  and  importance,  and  unless  we  can  have 
laws  to  govern  us  that  will  be  respected  and  obeyed  our  situation 
will  be  a  deplorable  one.  Where  the  highest  court  of  api)eal  is  the 
ritle  safety  in  life  and  property  can  not  be  depended  on. 

''The  state  of  the  country,  its  climate,  resources,  soil,  produc- 
tions, etc.,  have  already  been  laid  before  your  honorable  body  in 
Captain  Wyeth's  memoir  and  in  former  memorials  from  the  in- 
habitants of  this  place. 

"Laws  are  made  to  protect  the  weak  against  the  mighty,  and 
we  feel  the  necessity  of  them  in  the  steps  that  are  constantly  taken 
by  the  honorable  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  their  opposition  to  the  im- 
provement and  enterprise  of  American  citizens.  You  have  been 
apjirised  already  of  their  opposition  to  Captain  Wyeth,  Bonneville 
and  others ;  and  we  find  that  the  same  spirit  dwells  with  them  at 
the  present  day.  Some  years  ago  when  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
owned  all  the  cattle  in  Oregon  they  would  not  sell  on  any  condi- 
tions, but  they  would  lend  their  cows  to  the  settler — he  returning 
to  the  company  the  cows  loaned,  with  all  the  increase;  and  in  case 
of  the  death  of  a  cow,  he  then  had  the  privilege  of  paying  for  it. 
But  after  the  settlers,  at  great  risk  and  expense,  went  to  California 
and  i)urchased  for  themselves  and  there  was  a  fair  prospect  of  the 
settlement  being  supplied,  then  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  were  willing 
to  sell  at  lower  prices  than  the  settlers  could  sell. 

"Tn  the  year  1842.  feeling  the  necessity  of  having  mills  erected 
that  could  supply  the  settlement  with  flour  and  lumber,  a  number 
of  the  inhabitants  formed  themselves  into  a  joint  stock  company, 
for  the  purpose  of  sui»plying  the  growing  wants  of  the  community. 
Many  of  the  farmei's  were  obliged  to  leave  their  farms  on  the 
Wallamet  and  go  six  miles  above  Vancouver  on  the  Columbia  River, 
making  the  whole  distance  about  sixty  miles,  to  get  their  wheat 
ground,  at  a  great  loss  of  time  and  expense.  The  company  was 
formed  and  j)i-oceeded  to  select  a  site.  They  selected  an  island  at 
tlM'  falls  of  the  Wallamet  and  concluded  to  commence  their  opera- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  443 

tions.  After  commencing  they  were  informed  by  Dr.  McLonghlin, 
who  is  at  the  head  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  affairs  west  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  that  the  land  was  his  and  that  he  (although  a 
chief  factor  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.)  claimed  all  the  land  on  the 
east  side  of  the  Wallamet,  embracing  the  falls  down  to  the  Clacka- 
mas River,  a  distance  of  about  two  miles.  He  had  no  idea,  we  pre- 
sume, that  the  company  would  succeed.  However,  he  erected  a 
shed  on  the  island  after  the  stuff  was  on  the  island  to  build  a  house, 
and  then  gave  them  permission  to  build  under  certain  restrictions. 
They  took  the  paper  he  wrote  them  containing  his  conditions,  but 
did  not  obligate  themselves  to  comply  with  the  conditions,  as  they 
did  not  think  his  claim  just  or  reasonable. 

"Many  projects  had  been  started  by  the  inhabitants,  but  for 
want  of  means  and  encouragement  failed.  This  fate  was  predicted 
for  the  milling  company.  But  after  much  labor  and  difficulty  they 
succeeded  in  getting  a  sawmill  erected  and  ready  to  run  and  en- 
tered into  a  contract  to  have  a  grist  mill  erected  forthwith.  And 
now,  as  they  have  succeeded,  where  is  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.?  Dr. 
McLoughlin  employs  hands  to  get  out  a  frame  for  a  sawmill  and 
erect  it  at  Wallamet  Falls ;  and  we  find  as  soon  as  the  frame  is  up 
the  gearing,  which  has  been  made  at  Vancouver,  is  brought  up  in 
boats ;  and  that  which  cost  a  feeble  company  of  American  citizens 
months  of  toil  and  embarrassment  is  accomplished  by  the  chief 
factor  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  in  a  few  weeks.  He  has  men  and 
means  and  it  is  said  by  him  that  in  two  weeks  his  mill  will  be 
sawing.  And  what  will  be  the  consequence?  Why,  if  the  milling 
company  sells  for  |15  per  thousand  he  can  sell  for  |12;  if  they  re- 
duce the  price  to  |10  he  can  come  to  |8  or  $5  or  |2  per  thousand. 
He  says  he  will  have  a  grist  mill  started  as  soon  as  he  gets  the  saw- 
mill in  operation. 

"All  the  wheat  in  Oregon  they  are  anxious  to  get,  as  they  ship 
it  to  the  Russians  on  the  northwest  coast.  In  the  first  place  they 
measured  the  wheat  in  a  half-bushel,  called  by  them  imperial  meas- 
ure, much  larger  than  the  standard  measure  of  the  United  States. 
This  not  answering  they  next  proceeded  to  kick  the  half-bushel 
with  the  foot  to  settle  the  wheat;  then  they  brought  up  a  measure 
larger  than  the  former  one;  and  now  they  fill  this  measure,  then 
strike  it  three  times  with  a  stout  club,  then  fill  it  up  and  call  it  fair 
measure.  Against  such  proceedings  we  need  law  that  will  be  re- 
spected and  obeyed. 

"About  twelve  or  fourteen  years  ago  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co. 
blasted  a  canal  a  few  feet  to  conduct  water  to  a  mill  they  were 
going  to  build,  the  timber  for  which  is  now  lying  at  the  falls  rot- 
ting.    They,  however,  abandoned   the  thing  altogether  and   built 


444  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

their  mills  on  the  Columbia,  about  six  miles  above  Vancouver,  on 
the  north  side  of  the  river. 

"In  the  year  1837,  agreeably  to  orders  left  by  Mr.  Slacum,  a 
house  was  erected  at  the  falls  to  secure  the  claim  for  him. 

"In  1840  the  Methodist  Mission  erected  buildings  at  the  falls 
and  stationed  two  families  there  and  made  a  claim  to  sufficient 
land  for  their  buildings,  not  interfering  with  any  others  who  might 
wish  to  build.  A  short  time  previous  to  this  Dr.  McLoughlin  had 
a  storehouse  erected  for  the  company,  not  occupied,  however,  far- 
ther than  to  store  wheat  and  other  articles  in  and  as  a  trading 
house  during  the  salmon  season. 

'^\fter  this,  in  1841,  a  shanty  was  erected  and  a  man  kept  at 
the  falls,  whose  business  it  was  to  trade  with  the  Indians  for  furs 
and  salmon  and  look  out  for  the  doctor's  claim,  he  said,  and  to  for- 
bid j)ersons  building  at  the  falls,  as  some  had  built  and  others  were 
about  building.  This  man  was,  and  still  is,  a  servant  of  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co. 

"During  the  years  1841  and  1842  several  families  settled  at  the 
falls,  when  Dr.  McLoughlin,  who  still  resides  at  Fort  Vancouver, 
conies  on  the  ground  and  says  the  land  is  his  and  any  person  build- 
ing without  his  permission  is  held  as  a  trespasser.  Without  refer- 
ence to  any  person's  right  or  claim  he  employs  a  surveyor  to  run  out 
the  plat;  and  as  a  bill  was  before  the  Senate  of  the  United  States 
to  grant  to  every  white  male  inhabitant  a  mile  square  he  has  a  mile 
run  out  to  suit  his  views  and  lays  out  a  town  plat  at  the  falls  and 
calls  it  Oregon  City.  Although  some,  for  peace  sake,  asked  him  for 
the  lots  they  had  already  in  possession,  and  which  he  appeared  very 
willing  to  grant,  the  doctor  now  felt  himself  secure  and  posted  up 
the  annexed  paper  (marked  A),  which  is  the  original;  and  all  who 
had  lots  were  required  to  pay  Mr.  Hastings  five  dollars  for  a  deed 
of  land  which  they  knew  very  well  the  grantor  did  not  own,  and 
which  we  hope  he  never  will,  but  that  Congress  will  pass 
a  special  act  granting  to  each  man  his  lot  and  improve- 
ments. Those  that  applied  received  (if  they  had  a  house 
on  the  lot)  a  deed,  a  copy  of  which  is  annexed  (marked  B)  ; 
if  they  had  no  house,  a  bond  was  given  for  five  dollars,  a  copy  of 
which  is  annexed  (marked  C).  To  those  that  applied  and  paid 
their  five  dollars  all  was  right  with  the  doctor,  while  those  who  con- 
sidered his  title  to  the  land  not  good,  and  that  therefore  he  had  no 
right  to  direct  who  should  build  and  who  should  not,  had  their  lots 
sold  to  others.  In  one  case  the  purchaser  came  to  the  original 
claimant  and  ordered  him  to  stop  digging  the  ground  which  he  was 
preparing  for  a  garden  and  commanded  him  to  remove  his  fences, 
as  he  had  Dr.  ^SIcLoughlin's  bond  in  his  pocket  for  the  lots;  and  if 
he  did  not  move  the  fence  he  would,  and  take  forcible  possession. 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  445 

Those  who  desired  to  have  no  difficulty  and  did  not  apply  for  a 
deed  have  lost  their  lots,  the  doctor's  promise  and  all.  And  Mr. 
Hastings  (the  doctor's  agent)  is  now  offering  for  sale  the  lots  on 
which  part  of  the  mission  buildings  stand,  and  if  he  succeeds  in 
finding  a  purchaser  they  must  either  contend  or  lose  their  build- 
ings. 

"Dr.  McLoughlin  has  held  claims  in  other  places  south  of  the 
Columbia  River;  at  the  Tualatin  Plains  and  Clackamas  Plains  he 
had  huts  erected  to  prevent  others  from  building,  and  such  is  the 
power  of  Dr.  McLoughlin  that  many  persons  are  actually  afraid  to 
make  their  situation  known,  thinking  if  he  hears  of  it  he  will  stop 
their  supplies.  Letters  were  received  here  from  Messrs.  Ladd  &  Co. 
of  the  Sandwich  Islands  in  answer  to  a  letter  written  by  the  late 
Mr.  Ewing  Young  for  a  few  supplies,  that  orders  were  received  for- 
bidding the  company's  vessels  carrying  any  goods  for  the  settlers 
of  Oregon.  Every  means  will  be  made  use  of  by  them  to  break  down 
everything  that  will  draw  trade  to  this  country  or  enable  persons 
to  get  goods  at  any  other  place  than  their  store. 

"One  other  item  and  we  are  done.  When  the  United  States  Gov- 
ernment officers  of  distinction  arrive  Vancouver  is  thrown  open  and 
every  facility  afforded  them.  They  were  even  more  condescending 
to  the  settlers  during  the  time  the  exploring  squadron  was  in  the 
Columbia ;  nothing  was  left  undone  to  give  the  officers  a  high  opin- 
ion of  the  honorable  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  Our  Indian  agent  is  en- 
tirely dependent  on  them  for  supplies  and  funds  to  carry  on  his 
operations. 

"And  now  your  memorialists  pray  your  honorable  body  that 
immediate  action  of  Congress  be  taken  in  regard  to  this  country 
and  good  and  wholesome  laws  be  enacted  for  our  Territory,  as  may, 
in  your  wisdom,  be  thought  best  for  the  good  of  the  American  citi- 
zens residing  here. 

"And  your  memorialists  will  ever  pray. 

"Eobert  Shortess,  A.  E.  Wilson,  W.  C.  Remick,  Jeffrey  Brown, 
E.  N.  Coombs,  Rouben  Lewis,  George  Davis,  V.  Bennett,  J.  Rekener, 
T.  J.  Hubbard,  James  A.  O'Neil,  Jor.  Horregon,  William  McCarty, 
Charles  Compo,  John  Howard,  R.  Williams,  G.  Brown,  John  Tur- 
ner, Theodore  Pancott,  A.  F.  Waller,  J.  R.  Robb,  J.  L.  Morrison,  M. 
Crawford,  John  Anderson,  James  M.  Bates,  L.  H.  Judson,  Joel 
Turnham,  Richard  H.  Ekin,  H.  Campbell,  James  Force,  W.  H.  Wil- 
son, Felix  Hathaway,  J.  Lawson,  Thomas  J.  Shadden,  Joseph  Gibbs, 
S.  Lewis,  Jr.,  Charles  Roy,  William  Brown,  S.  Davis,  Joseph  Yat- 
ten,  John  Hopstatter,  G.  W.  Sellomy,  William  Brown,  A.  Beers,  J. 
L.  Parish,  William  H.  Gray,  A.  D.  Smith,  J.  C.  Bridgers,  Aaron 
Cook,  A.  Copsland,  S.  W.  Moss,  Gustavus  Hines,  George  W.  Le- 
Breton,  Daniel  Girtman,  C.  T.  Arrendrill,  A.  Touner,  David  Carter, 


44(i  AC(jii;srno\  of  oreoon 

J.  J.  Campbell,  W.  Jolinson,  John  Edwards,  W.  TTauxbiirst,  W.  A. 
PtiellVr,  .1.  Iltdiuan,  11.  l>.  Jirewer,  William  C.  Sutton.  Sixty-five  in 
all." 

The  exhibits  accompanying  the  petition  are  not  of  the  slightest 
importance,  being  merely  copies  of  deeds,  contracts,  etc.,  relating 
to  lots  in  Oregon  City. 

Concerning  this  petition  Evans'  ^'History  of  the  Northwest 
Coast"  (Vol.  I.,  pp.  246-47)  has  the  following: 

"That  document  was  an  arraignment  of  John  McLoughlin  for 
his  management  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.'s  affairs,  an  accusation 
of  oppression  and  wrong  to  the  Oregon  pioneers  and  their  families. 

"(1)  It  charges  that  Dr.  McLoughlin  refused  to  sell  cattle  for 
many  years,  and  afterward  sold  at  lower  rates  than  settlers; 

"(2)  It  refers  to  the  Oregon  City  claim.  It  was  valuable  as  a 
townsite  and  for  its  wonderful  water  power.  Such  features  made 
it  valuable  to  the  Methodist  Mission,  to  the  American  settler.  The 
jtetltion  denounces  the  doctor's  acts  of  settlement  as  in  bad  faith; 
that  his  claim  is  without  a  shadow  of  right.  It  asks  that  he  may 
be  divested  of  interest,  his  claims  be  ignored  and  disregarded; 

'^(3)  It  com])lains  that  he  can  build  mills  and  saw  lumber 
cheaper  and  does  undersell  the  settler; 

"(4)  It  alleges  that  in  buying  wheat  he  insisted  upon  good 
measure ; 

*'(5)  That  Ihose  who  had  recognized  his  claim  to  Oregon  City 
and  had  obtained  grants  of  lots  from  him  he  notified  to  comply 
with  their  contract; 

"(6)  That  the  company's  vessels  were  not  allowed  to  bring 
goods  from  the  Sandwich  Islands  to  the  settlers; 

'M7)  That  the  company's  officers  were  more  hospitable  to  vis- 
iting officials  and  jtersons  of  distinction  than  to  ])rivate  citizens. 

"Simple  justice  to  the  memory  of  the  dead  demands  quoting  Dr. 
McLoughlin's  own  comments  upon  those  imputations  upon  his  per- 
sonal integrity  and  method  of  dealing.  Of  the  cattle  policy  and 
the  Oregon  City  claim  more  extended  discussion  cannot  be  avoided. 
As  soon  as  Dr.  McLoughlin  had  been  informed  of  the  charges  made 
in  the  petition  he  thus  referred  to  them  (Letter  to  Lansford  W. 
Hastings,  April  10,  1843)  : 

''  'First,  as  to  my  o])posing  them  in  ])urchasing  cattle,  it  is  false. 
Mr.  Lee'  (i.  e.,  Rev.  Jason  Lee,  who  would  not  sign  the  petition) 
*knows  how  false  this  is.  Every  one  knows  who  was  then  in  the 
country  that  so  anxious  was  I  to  replenish  the  country  with  cat- 
tle that  I  killed  none  till  1838  and  would  sell  none,  because,  as  I 
told  them,  they  would  kill  them  and  not  allow  them  to  increase. 
Tint  1  lent  cattle  to  every  man  who  wanted  to  settle,  for  which, 
when   they  had  them,  I  took  wild  cattle  from  California,  and  of 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  447 

which  fully  one-third  died  a  short  time  after  we  got  them.  As  to 
kicking  or  striking  the  half-bushel,  it  is  the  custom  in  that  part  of 
Canada  where  I  have  been.  The  measure  is  the  imperial  measure 
and  which  ought  to  contain  seventy  pounds  of  good  wheat.  Talking 
some  time  ago  with  Dr.  White,  in  case  the  cooper  might  have  made 
a  mistake,  I  had  a  half-bushel  measured  by  an  imperial  copper  half- 
pint  measure  (sent  here  for  the  purpose)  in  the  presence  of  Dr. 
White,  and  though  it  was  exactly  the  measure  with  water,  yet  I 
find,  filled  with  wheat,  it  does  not  weigh  seventy  pounds;  and  as 
our  wheat  is  as  good  as  any  I  know  I  infer  that  the  measure  is 
smaller  than  it  ought  to  be,  which  is  caused  by  the  copper  measure 
having  been  knocked  a  little  on  the  side,  and  is  therefore  smaller 
than  size.  The  truth  is  when  I  was  first  asked  the  price  of  wheat 
I  said  two  shillings  and  sixpence,  as  I  calculated  a  bushel  to  weigh 
sixty  pounds ;  but  finding  on  measuring  that  it  weighed  seventy-two 
pounds  I  told  them  without  their  asking  it  I  would  give  three  shil- 
lings per  bushel.' 

"  'I  thought  that  my  character  as  an  honest  man  was  beyond 
suspicion;  when  I  find  who  those  are  who  have  cast  these  reflec- 
tions on  me  I  shall  have  no  dealings  with  them,  as  I  will  not  deal 
with  people  who  suspect  my  integrity.  As  to  reports  if  they  sold 
their  boards  for  twenty  dollars  per  thousand  I  would  sell  them  for 
fifteen  dollars  per  thousand  and  undersell  them,  it  is  false;  and  as 
to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  I  opposing  the  interests  of  citizens, 
really  the  citizens  are  themselves  the  best  judges  if  we  did  so  or 
not.  And  I  am  certain  if  they  are  so  lost  to  a  sense  of  what  is  due 
to  truth  as  to  make  such  an  assertion  it  is  useless  for  me  to  say 
anything;  but  I  feel  confident  that  I  can  easily  prove  it  is  not  so, 
and  that  a  very  large  majority  will  support  me  in  it.  As  to  the  peti- 
tion if  the  document  went  no  further  than  this  place  I  would  be 
silent ;  but  when  I  consider  where  it  is  to  go  and  to  whom  it  is  to  be 
presented,  respect  to  them  and  to  myself  makes  it  my  duty  to  take 
notice  of  it.'  " 

''Persistent  refusal  by  Dr.  McLoughlin  to  sell  cattle  to  the  Ore- 
gon Methodist  Mission  and  to  settlers  had  caused  great  disafl'ection 
to  the  company.  Dr.  McLoughlin  thus  referred  to  the  course  adopted 
by  him  and  rigidly  adhered  to  un^il  1838  (Cf.  for  this  p.  435,  ante)  : 

"The  reason  ofl'ered  by  Dr.  McLoughlin,  which  was  that  there  was 
insufficient  stock  in  the  country;  that  importation  was  most  expen- 
sive and  hazardous,  and  that  all  that  there  was  in  the  country  should 
be  preserved  to  secure  increase,  was  unavailing.  To  the  settler  it 
was  not  satisfactory  to  be  told  that  the  company's  start  had  been 
a  few  head  driven  at  vast  expense  and  danger  along  the  coast  from 
the  Russian  establishments  on  Bodega  Bay  in  California;  that 
those  establishments  most  begrudgingly  spared  them,  their  Call- 


448  ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON 

fornia  settlements  beinjj:  only  intended  to  supply  their  northern 
Iradinj;,'  posts;  that  the  colonial  law  of  California  prohibited  the 
exportation  of  female  cattle.  The  scarcity  of  cattle,  the  dissatis- 
faction of  settlers  because  of  this  refusal  to  sell,  continued  until 
the  importation  of  stock  by  the  California  company.  Referring  to 
that  enterprise  Dr.  ]\rcLoughlin's  statement  is  to  be  found  on  p. 
4.')(>,  ante. 

As  we  have  already  seen  from  the  testimony  of  J.  W.  Nesmith, 
Jesse  Ai)ple<iate  (pj).  419423  and  424-5,  ante),  and  W.  H.  Gray 
(Chapter  III.  of  Tart  II.,  infra),  on  the  28th  of  June,  1845,  they 
with  all  the  other  members  of  the  provisional  «;overnment  of  Oregon 
signed  another  petition  to  Congress  (which  is  Sen.  Ex.  Doc.  No.  8, 
2!llh  Cong.,  1st  Sess.)  which,  unlike  this  petition  of  1843,  stated  the 
exact  truth  as  to  the  relations  between  the  two  nationalities  in  Ore- 
gon as  follows  (Cf.  their  testimony  on  cross-examination)  : 

*'We,  the  citizens  of  the  United  States,  have  no  cause  to  com- 
jdain  either  of  exactions  or  oppression  at  the  hands  of  the  sub- 
jects of  Great  Britain,  but  on  the  contrary  it  is  but  just  to  say  their 
conduct  towards  us  has  been  most  friendly,  liberal  and  philan- 
thropic." 

The  gold  discoveries  in  California  drew  thither  in  1849  a  large 
part  of  the  most  energetic  and  brilliant  men  in  Oregon,  and  so  it 
came  to  pass  that  when  in  that  year  the  first  election  for  a  Dele- 
gate to  Congress  was  held  none  of  the  first-class  men  who  were 
in  the  earlier  migrations  remained  to  contest  for  the  place,  and  S. 
R.  Thurston,  a  young  lawyer  from  Maine,  who  had  only  reached 
Oregon  with  the  migration  of  1847,  was  put  forward  as  the  candi- 
date of  the  Methodist  Mission  clique,  and  receiving  470  out  of  a 
total  of  973  votes  (which  was  probably  less  than  one-quarter  of  the 
legal  voters),  was  duly  elected  to  represent  as  a  Delegate  in  Con- 
gress what  is  now  Oregon,  Washington,  Idaho  and  parts  of  Mon- 
tana and  Wyoming. 

Thurston  was  venomously  antagonistic  to  McLoughlin  and  the 
Hudson's  Bfiy  Co.,  repeating  on  the  floor  of  Congress  Spalding's 
shameful  and  baseless  slander  that  the  Hudson's  liay  Co.  instigated 
the  Whitinnn  massacre  (Cf.  Cong.  Globe,  H.  of  R.,  Dec.  20,  1850) 
and  declaring : 

"In  every  move  to  }>romote  the  settlement  and  internal  improve- 
ment of  Oregon  Dr.  McLoughlin  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  to  a 
man  have  been  opposed,  until  they  were  absolutely  compelled  by 
force  of  circumstances  to  yield.  The  history  of  that  company  in 
Oregon  is  no  less  opj)ressive  and  unjust,  as  regards  American  citi- 
zens, than  was  that  of  their  ancestors  in  1776." 

As  no  one  was  there  to  defend  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  and  Mc- 


ACQUISITION    OF    OREGON  449 

Loughlin  these  outrag:eous  falsehoods  resulted  in  accomplishing 
what  Thurston  sought  to  do,  and  in  the  Donation  Land  Law, 
passed  by  Congress  September  27,  1850,  the  possessory  right  of 
every  claimant  to  a  mile  square  of  land  in  the  Territory  of  Oregon 
was  confirmed  except  McLoughlin's,  although  every  one  held  by 
precisely  the  same  tenure  as  his  and  although  his  antedated  all  the 
others  by  from  five  to  twenty  years. 

McLoughlin's  claim  was  reserved  and  donated  to  the  Territory 
of  Oregon  for  a  university.  Dr.  McLoughlin  died  in  the  autumn 
of  1857  at  Oregon  City,  his  old  age  embittered  by  this  shameful  in- 
justice, but  to  the  honor  of  the  Oregon  people  in  1862  the  Legisla- 
ture refused  longer  to  be  a  party  to  such  a  grievous  wrong  and  for 
the  merely  nominal  consideration  of  |1,000  restored  the  Oregon 
City  claim  to  the  heirs  of  the  "good  old  doctor,"  the  true  'Tather 
of  Oregon." 

(For  full  discussion  of  this  Cf.  Chapter  XXXL,  Vol.  I.,  Evans' 
"History  of  the  Pacific  Northwest.") 

Are  we  to  understand  from  the  evidence  adduced  in  this  chap- 
ter that  McLoughlin,  McKinlay,  Douglas,  Grant,  Pambrun,  Payette, 
Ogden,  McDonald,  Lewes,  Birnie,  Ermatinger  and  the  other  chief 
factors  and  chief  traders  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  desired  American 
settlers  and  missionaries  to  occupy  Oregon?  Not  at  all.  They 
were  British  subjects,  and  unques^ionably,  as  all  loyal  British  sub- 
jects ought  to  have  done,  they  hoped  and  expected  that  the  English 
title  would  be  established  to  that  part  of  Oregon  north  and  west  of 
the  Columbia.  But  they  also  unquestionably  knew  that  under  the 
treaty  of  joint  policy  of  1818,  renewed  in  1827,  American  citizens 
had  exactly  the  same  rights  in  Oregon  that  British  subjects  had, 
and  their  interests  were  so  vast  in  that  territory  that  that  "enlight- 
ened selfishness"  which  ever  characterized  the  policy  of  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Co.  would  of  itself  have  caused  them  to  strictly  observe 
the  spirit  of  that  treaty  and  treat  Americans  with  justice.  But, 
beyond  this,  several  of  these  men,  notably  McLeod-  McKay,  Mc- 
Loughlin, McKinlay,  Douglas,  Ogden,  Grant,  McDonald,  Pambrun 
and  Lewes,  were  men  of  great  natural  ability  and  high  character, 
fit  to  rank  among  "Nature's  noblemen,"  measured  by  any  reason- 
able standard,  and  their  broad  humanity  and  natural  nobility  of 
character  manifested  itself  in  their  whole  course,  as  shown  by  the 
evidence  herein  quoted. 

They  also  knew  well  what  the  advocates  of  the  Whitman  Saved 
Oregon  Legend  have  never  yet  learned  (witness  Mowry's  "Marcus 
Whitman,"  published  in  1901 ;  Rev.  M.  Eells'  "Reply  to  Professor 
Bourne,"  1902;  Rev.  Joseph  R.  Clark's  "Leavening  the  Nation," 
1903;  D.  O.  Shelton's  "Heroes  of  the  Cross  in  America,"  1904),  viz.: 


450  ACQUISITION   OF   OREGON 

That  by  the  express  terms  of  the  treaties  of  1818  and  1827,  as  un- 
derstood by  both  Governments,  no  posts  or  settlements  that  the 
subjects  or  citizens  of  either  nation  might  establish  while  these 
treaties  remained  in  force  could  settle  or  in  the  least  degree  aflfeet 
the  right  of  either  nation  to  any  part  of  the  Oregon  Territory. 

The  (]U('sli()n  is  not  what  did  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  desire?  For 
undoublcdiy  they  desired,  and  ought  to  have  desired,  that  Ameri- 
cans sliould  not  be  in  Oregon  at  all,  but  that  it  should  be  a  part 
of  the  British  dominions. 

The  question  is  ''What  did  the  Hudson's  Bay  Co.  do  when  that 
which  they  did  not  desire  hapi)ened,  and  Americans  came  into  the 
Oregon  Territory  as  fur  traders,  missionaries,  scientific  explorers, 
travelers,  government  exploring  expeditions  and  settlers?" 

That  is  the  question  which  I  have  sought  to  answer  in  the  only 
way  in  which  historical  questions  can  be  settled,  by  quoting  the 
best  possible  evidence,  to-wit:  All  the  contemporaneous  testimony 
fhat  T  have  been  able  to  discover  of  those  Americans  themselves, 
with  a  little  later  evidence  from  prominent  Oregon  })ioneers,  all  of 
them  of  the  highest  character,  all  of  them  having  no  interest  in  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Co.,  and  all  men  whose  Americanism  is  undoubted, 
and  all  of  them  men  who  had  exceptional  facilities  for  knowing 
what  were  the  real  facts  in  the  case. 


[End  of  Vol.  I.] 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


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